Mr. Rollings
was not sorry to assent to this, and I believe it is now many years
since the coastguard people have suspected any of the Rollings
family as offenders against the revenue law.
"Why should I take them from where they are," said Ernest to me in
the train as we went home, "to send them to schools where they will
not be one half so happy, and where their illegitimacy will very
likely be a worry to them? Georgie wants to be a bargeman, let him
begin as one, the sooner the better; he may as well begin with this as
with anything else; then if he shows developments I can be on the
lookout to encourage them and make things easy for him; while if he
shows no desire to go ahead, what on earth is the good of trying to
shove him forward?"
Ernest, I believe, went on with a homily upon education generally,
and upon the way in which young people should go through the embryonic
stages with their money as much as with their limbs, beginning life in
a much lower social position than that in which their parents were,
and a lot more, which he has since published; but I was getting on
in years, and the walk and the bracing air had made me sleepy, so
ere we had got past Greenhithe Station on our return journey I had
sunk into a refreshing sleep.
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