decided to go in for medicine, was already walking a hospital. Shortly
after this our father died suddenly. He was at work as usual in his
laboratory when he was seized by a paralytic stroke, and in three days he
was dead.

This blow quite stunned us for a time. Our father was everything to us;
and the possibility of his death we had never contemplated. Though, as I
have explained, he had always left us free to follow our own devices,
still he was the centre round which our family life circled; we were
passionately attached to him, and now that he was gone we felt at a loss
indeed. We had no relatives living of our father's; our mother's family we
had never known, and they were too distant to be practically available.
Our father's friends were not such as to be of much help to us. Cat
enthusiasts and scientific dreamers are all very well in their way, but
they almost always take far more than they give in the mart of friendship.
The old professor had preceded my father to his grave.

Our father left us comfortably off. The house was our own, and property
yielding a comfortable income was divided equally between us. Our home
seemed desolate indeed without our father, and very gloomily did the first
months of his absence pass; but in time hope and youth reasserted
themselves and we gradually settled down to much our old way of life.
Caroline obtained several engagements and was still studying
enthusiastically. Raymond passed most of his time at the hospital, where
he had rooms, though he frequently came home; I was the only one who had
not a definite occupation. I read a great deal and wrote a little also,
chiefly studies on historical subjects which interested me, but I had
printed nothing. In fact I had never been in the way of the literary
world, and did not know how to set about it. Time used often to hang
rather heavily on my hands in the big house where I was generally alone. I