"O, it's all right," answered Ernie, wagging his head. "Only it ain't quite the same like. You gets used to it, as the sayin is."
"And you'll get use-ter to it afore you're through, you'll see," his friend answered, not without a touch of triumphant bitterness. He liked others to suffer what he had suffered himself.
As little by little the romance of wife and children began to lose its glamour, and the economic pressure steadily increased, the old weakness began at times to re-assert itself in Ernie. He haunted the Star over much. Joe Burt chaffed him.
"Hitch your wagon to a star by all means, Ern," he said. "But not that one."
Mr. Pigott too cautioned him once or twice, alike as friend and employer.
"Family man now, you know, Ernie," he said.
The sinner was always disarming in his obviously sincere penitence.
"I knaw I've unbuttoned a bit of late, sir," he admitted. "I'll brace up. I will and I can."
And at the critical moment the fates, which seemed as fond of Ernie as was everybody else, helped him.
Susie, his first-born, caught pneumonia. The shock stimulated Ernie; as shock always did. The steel that was in him gleamed instantly through the rust.