and women. I was to have my meals with the two elderly Miss
Dawsons in the little parlour behind the three-cornered shop
downstairs; my breakfasts and dinners at least, for, as my hours
in an evening were likely to be uncertain, my tea or supper was
to be an independent meal.

Then, after this pride and satisfaction, came a sense of
desolation. I had never been from home before, and I was an only
child; and though my father's spoken maxim had been, 'Spare the
rod, and spoil the child', yet, unconsciously, his heart had
yearned after me, and his ways towards me were more tender than
he knew, or would have approved of in himself could he have
known. My mother, who never professed sternness, was far more
severe than my father: perhaps my boyish faults annoyed her more;
for I remember, now that I have written the above words, how she
pleaded for me once in my riper years, when I had really offended
against my father's sense of right.

But I have nothing to do with that now. It is about cousin
Phillis that I am going to write, and as yet I am far enough from
even saying who cousin Phillis was.

For some months after I was settled in Eltham, the new employment
in which I was engaged--the new independence of my life--occupied
all my thoughts. I was at my desk by eight o'clock, home to
dinner at one, back at the office by two. The afternoon work was
more uncertain than the morning's; it might be the same, or it
might be that I had to accompany Mr Holdsworth, the managing
engineer, to some point on the line between Eltham and Hornby.
This I always enjoyed, because of the variety, and because of the