For the first year of his life in London John Eames had lived alone in lodgings; but that had resulted in discomfort, solitude, and, alas! in some amount of debt, which had come heavily on the poor widow.

Now, for the second year, some safer mode of life was necessary.

She had learned that Mrs Cradell, the widow of a barrister, who had also succeeded in getting her son into the Income-tax Office, had placed him in charge of Mrs Roper; and she, with many injunctions to that motherly woman, submitted her own boy to the same custody.
"And about going to church ?" Mrs Eames had said to Mrs Roper.
"I don't suppose I can look after that, ma'am," Mrs Roper had answered, conscientiously.

"Young gentlemen choose mostly their own churches." "But they do go ?" asked the mother, very anxious in her heart as to this new life in which her boy was to be left to follow in so many things the guidance of his own lights.
"They who have been brought up steady do so, mostly." "He has been brought up steady, Mrs Roper.

He has, indeed.