le--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,
perhaps I had better hold my tongue on that subject; for what is the
good of shocking people unless one has a very good reason for doing so?

My father's pedigree did not help him into good practice, and he died
young--a grave mistake, people tell me, for a professional man to
commit. My mother was very pretty and very helpless, but then she had a
pedigree, too, and, probably, that forbade her to soil her white hands.
She was a fine lady, with more heart than head, which she had lost most
unwisely to the handsome young doctor. After his death, she made futile
efforts for her child's sake, but the grinding wheel of poverty caught
the poor butterfly and crushed her to death.

My poor, tender-hearted, unhappy mother! Well, the world is a cruel
place to these soft, unprotected natures.

I should have fared badly but for Aunt Agatha; her hardly-earned savings
were all spent on my education. She was a clever, highly-educated woman,
and c