Wattleborough ladies having their doubts regarding the position
of a deceased wife's sister under such circumstances; but no one
was seriously exercised about the relations between this sober
lady of forty-five and a man of sixty-three in broken health.

A word of the family history.

John, Alfred, and Edmund Yule were the sons of a Wattleborough
stationer. Each was well educated, up to the age of seventeen, at
the town's grammar school. The eldest, who was a hot-headed lad,
but showed capacities for business, worked at first with his
father, endeavouring to add a bookselling department to the trade
in stationery; but the life of home was not much to his taste,
and at one-and-twenty he obtained a clerk's place in the office
of a London newspaper. Three years after, his father died, and
the small patrimony which fell to him he used in making himself
practically acquainted with the details of paper manufacture, his
aim being to establish himself in partnership with an
acquaintance who had started a small paper-mill in Hertfordshire.

His speculation succeeded, and as years went on he became a
thriving manufacturer. His brother Alfred, in the meantime, had
drifted from work at a London bookseller's into the modern Grub
Street, his adventures in which region will concern us hereafter.

Edmund carried on the Wattleborough business, but with small
success. Between him and his eldest brother existed a good deal
of affection, and in the end John offered him a share in his
flourishing paper works; whereupon Edmund married, deeming
himself well established for life. But John's temper was a