carking side of her pinched life. These virtues she had from her
father. Poor Cross, who supplemented a small income from office
routine by occasional comic journalism, and even wrote a farce
(which brought money to a theatrical manager), made on his deathbed
a characteristic joke. He had just signed his will, and was left
alone with his wife. "I'm sure I've, always wished to make your life
happy," piped the afflicted woman. "And I yours," he faintly
answered; adding, with a sad, kind smile, as he pointed to the
testamentary document, "Take the will for the deed."

The two sons had emigrated to British Columbia, and Bertha would not
have been sorry to join her brothers there, for domestic labour on a
farm, m peace and health, seemed to her considerably better than the
quasi-genteel life she painfully supported. She had never dreamt of
being an artist, but, showing some facility with the pencil, was
sent by her father to South Kensington, where she met and made
friends with Rosamund Elvan. Her necessity and her application being
greater than Rosamund's, Bertha before long succeeded in earning a
little money; without this help, life at home would scarcely have
been possible for her. They might, to be sure, have taken a lodger,
having spare rooms, but Mrs. Cross could only face that possibility
if the person received into the house were "respectable" enough to be
called a paying guest, and no such person offered. So they lived, as
no end of "respectable" families do, a life of penury and seclusion,
sometimes going without a meal that they might have decent clothing
to wear abroad, never able to buy a book, to hear a concert, and
only by painful sacrifice able to entertain a friend. When, on a
certain occasion, Miss Elvan passed a week at their house (Mrs.
Cross approved of this friendship, and hoped it might be a means of
discovering the paying guest), it meant for them a near approach to