To the last day of my life I do not think that I shall ever forget Aunt
Agatha's face when she read that advertisement.

"You intend to offer yourself for this situation, Merle--to lose caste,
and take your place among menials? It is enough to make my poor brother
rise in his grave, and your poor, dear mother too, to think of a Fenton
stooping to such degradation." But I will forbear to transcribe all the
wordy avalanche of lady-like invective that was hurled at me,
accompanied by much wringing of hands.

And yet the whole thing lay in a nut-shell. I, Merle Fenton, sound,
healthy, and aged two-and-twenty, being orphaned, penniless, and only
possessing one near relative in the world--Aunt Agatha--declined utterly
to be dependent for my daily bread and the clothes I wore on the
goodwill of her husband and my uncle by marriage, Ezra Keith.

No, I was not good. I daresay I was self-willed, contradictory, and as
obstinate as a mule that will go every way but the right way, but, all
the same, I loved Aunt Agatha, my dead father's only sister, and I
detested Uncle Keith with a perfectly unreasonable detestation.

Aunt Agatha had been a governess all her life. Certainly the Fenton
family had not much to boast of in the way of wealth. Pedigree and
poverty are not altogether pleasant yoke fellows. It may be comfortable
to one's feelings to know that a certain progenitor of ours made boots
at the time of the Conquest, though I am never quite sure in my mind
that they had bootmakers then; but my historical knowledge was always
defective. But a little money is also pleasant; indeed, if the pedigree
and the money came wooing to me, and I had to choose between them--well,