This lady occupied the whole ground floor.  In the front kitchen there was a tinker.  The back kitchen was let to a bellows-mender.  On the first floor came Ernest, with his two rooms which he furnished comfortably, for one must draw the line somewhere.  The two upper floors were parcelled out among four different sets of lodgers:  there was a tailor named Holt, a drunken fellow who used to beat his wife at night till her screams woke the house; above him there was another tailor with a wife but no children; these people were Wesleyans, given to drink but not noisy.  The two back rooms were held by single ladies, who it seemed to Ernest must be respectably connected, for well-dressed gentlemanly-looking young men used to go up and down stairs past Ernest’s rooms to call at any rate on Miss Snow—­Ernest had heard her door slam after they had passed.  He thought, too, that some of them went up to Miss Maitland’s.  Mrs Jupp, the landlady, told Ernest that these were brothers and cousins of Miss Snow’s, and that she was herself looking out for a situation as a governess, but at present had an engagement as an actress at the Drury Lane Theatre.  Ernest asked whether Miss Maitland in the top back was also looking out for a situation, and was told she was wanting an engagement as a milliner.  He believed whatever Mrs Jupp told him.

CHAPTER LIV

This move on Ernest’s part was variously commented upon by his friends, the general opinion being that it was just like Pontifex, who was sure to do something unusual wherever he went, but that on the whole the idea was commendable.  Christina could not restrain herself when on sounding her clerical neighbours she found them inclined to applaud her son for conduct which they idealised into something much more self-denying than it really was.  She did not quite like his living in such an unaristocratic neighbourhood; but what he was doing would probably get into the newspapers, and then great people would take notice of him.  Besides, it would be very cheap; down among these poor people he could live for next to nothing, and might put by a great deal of his income.  As for temptations, there could be few or none in such a place as that.  This argument about cheapness was the one with which she most successfully met Theobald, who grumbled more suo that he had no sympathy with his son’s extravagance and conceit.  When Christina pointed out to him that it would be cheap he replied that there was something in that.

On Ernest himself the effect was to confirm the good opinion of himself which had been growing upon him ever since he had begun to read for orders, and to make him flatter himself that he was among the few who were ready to give up all for Christ.  Ere long he began to conceive of himself as a man with a mission and a great future.  His lightest and most hastily formed opinions began to be of momentous importance to him, and he inflicted them, as I have already shown, on his old friends, week by week becoming more and more entete with himself and his own crotchets.  I should like well enough to draw a veil over this part of my hero’s career, but cannot do so without marring my story.