Paul's, and to wonder whether the pricks inflicted on that holy man could
have bled as his own did. He meant no irreverence when he thought this;
neither do I in writing it. We are generally wounded in the most
vulnerable spot about us, and Jabez Gum made no exception to the rule. He
had been assailed in his cherished respectability, his self-esteem.
Assailed and _scarred_. How broad and deep the scar was Jabez never told
the world, which as a rule does not sympathise with such scars, but turns
aside in its cruel indifference. The world had almost forgotten the scar
now, and supposed Clerk Gum had done the same. It was all over and done
with years ago.
Jabez Gum's wife--to whom you will shortly have the honour of an
introduction, but she is in her bedroom just now--had borne him one
child, and only one. How this boy was loved, how tenderly reared, let
Calne tell you. Mrs. Gum had to endure no inconsiderable amount of
ridicule at the time from her gossiping friends, who gave Willy sundry
endearing names, applied in derision. Certainly, if any mother ever was
bound up in a child, Mrs. Gum was in hers. The boy was well brought up. A
good education was given him; and at the age of sixteen he went to London
and to fortune. The one was looked upon as a natural sequence to the
other. Some friend of Jabez Gum's had interested himself to procure the
lad's admission into one of the great banks as a junior clerk.
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