was left for the widow and children, save a trifle of ready money. The
resolve to which, my mother came was characteristic. Two of her husband's
relatives, Western and Sir William Wood, offered to educate her son at a
good city school, and to start him in commercial life, using their great
city influence to push him forward. But the young lad's father and mother
had talked of a different future for their eldest boy; he was to go to a
public school, and then to the University, and was to enter one of the
"learned professions"--to take orders, the mother wished; to go to the
Bar, the father hoped. On his death-bed there was nothing more earnestly
urged by my father than that Harry should receive the best possible
education, and the widow was resolute to fulfil that last wish. In her
eyes, a city school was not "the best possible education", and the Irish
pride rebelled against the idea of her son not being "a University man".
Many were the lectures poured out on the young widow's head about her
"foolish pride", especially by the female members of the Wood family; and
her persistence in her own way caused a considerable alienation between
herself and them. But Western and William, though half-disapproving,
remained her friends, and lent many a helping hand to her in her first
difficult struggles. After much cogitation, she resolved that the boy
should be educated at Harrow, where the fees are comparatively low to
lads living in the town, and that he should go thence to Cambridge or to
Oxford, as his tastes should direct. A bold scheme for a penniless widow,
but carried out to the letter; for never dwelt in a delicate body a more
resolute mind and will than that of my dear mother.

In a few months' time--during which we lived, poorly enough, in Richmond
Terrace, Clapham, close to her father and mother--to Harrow, then, she
betook herself, into lodgings over a grocer's shop, and set herself to
look for a house. This grocer was a very pompous man, fond of long words,
and patronised the young widow exceedingly, and one day my mother related