grooves of life--which was my fate in after years. My mother, believing
in my dreams, contrived to send me to college--we both considered a
college education the only preliminary to a golden future. How she
managed it out of her slender means I cannot tell, but she kept me at
college for three years. I was just trying to decide what profession to
adopt, when a letter came summoning me suddenly home.

My mother was ill, not expected to live.

When I did reach home I found another source of trouble. My sister
Clare, whom I had left a beautiful, blooming girl of eighteen, had been
ill for the past year. The doctors declared it to be a spinal complaint,
from which she was not likely to recover, although she might live for
years.

She was unable to move, but lay always on a couch or sofa. The first
glimpse of her altered face, so sweet, so sad and colorless, made my
heart ache.

All the youth and bloom had died out of it.

My mother did not live many days; at her death her income ceased, and I
found myself, at twenty, obliged to begin the world as best I could, the
sole protector of my invalid sister. The first step was to sell our
little home, a pretty cottage at Hempstead, then to take lodgings nearer
the city; after that I set vigorously to work to look for a situation.

Ah, me, that weary task! I wonder if any of my readers ever went quite
alone, friendless, almost helpless, into the great, modern Babylon, to
look for a situation; if so, they will know how to pity me. I spent many