Pateleys, sisters of Robert Pateley, lived together. The death
of their parents, as we have said, had taken place when their brother
was already launched on his successful career as a journalist. They had
at first gone on living in the little country town in which their father
had been a solicitor. It had not occurred to them to do anything else.
They were surrounded there by people who knew them, who considered them,
towards whom their social position needed no explaining and by whom it
was taken for granted. When they went shopping, the tradespeople would
reply in a friendly way, "Yes, Miss Pateley,--No, Miss Jane. This is the
stocking you generally prefer"; or, "These were the pens you had last
time," with an intimate understanding of the needs of their customers,
forming a most pleasing contrast to the detached attitude of the staff
of big shops. The sisters had a very small income between them, eked out
by skilful management, and also, it must be said, by constant help from
their brother, who represented to them the moving principle of the
universe embodied in a visible form. He it was who knew things the
female mind cannot grasp, how to read the gas meter, what to do when the
cistern was blocked, or when the landlord said it was not his business
to mend the roof. These things which appeared so preoccupying to Anna
and Jane seemed to sit very lightly on their brother Robert, and when
they saw him shoulder each detail and deal with it with instant and
consummate ease they admired him as much as they did when they saw him
carrying upstairs his own big portmanteau which the united female
strength of the house was powerless to deal with. After a time Robert,
devoted brother though he was, found that it complicated existence to
have to settle these matters by correspondence, still more to have
suddenly to take a journey of several hours from London in order to deal
with them on the spot. He proposed to his sisters that they should come
and live in London. With many misgivings, and yet not without some
secret excitement, they assented, and for a few months before our story
begins they had been established in the same house as their brother, on
the floor above the lodgings he inhabited in Vernon Street, Bloomsbury.
Vernon Street, Bloomsbury, was perhaps a fortunate place for them to
begin their London life in, if London life, except as a geographical
term, it can be called, for two poor little ladies living more
absolutely