f anxiety clouded their future. When he died, he believed
that he left his wife and children safe, at least, from pecuniary
distress. It was not so. I know nothing of the details, but the
outcome of all was that nothing was left for the widow and children,
save a trifle of ready money. The resolve to which my mother came was
characteristic. Two of her husband's relatives, Western and Sir
William Wood, offered to educate her son at a good city school, and to
start him in commercial life, using their great city influence to push
him forward. But the young lad's father and mother had talked of a
different future for their eldest boy; he was to go to a public
school, and then to the University, and was to enter one of the
"learned professions"--to take orders, the mother wished; to go to the
Bar, the father hoped. On his death-bed there was nothing more
earnestly urged by my father than that Harry should receive the best
possible education, and the widow was resolute to fulfil that last
wish. In her eyes, a city school was not "the best possible
education," and the Irish pride rebelled against the idea of her son
not being "a University man." Many were the lectures poured out on the
young widow's head about her "foolish pride," especially by the female
members of the Wood family; and her persistence in her own way caused
a considerable alienation between herself and them. But Western and
William, though half-disapproving, remained her friends, and lent many
a helping hand to her in her first difficult struggles. After much
cogitation, she resolved that the boy should be educated at Harrow,
where the fees are comparatively low to lads living in the town, and
that he should go thence to Cambridge or to Oxford, as his tastes
should direct. A bold scheme for a penniless widow, but carried out to
the letter; for never dwelt in a delicate body a more resolute mind
and will than that of my dear mother.

In a few months' time--during which we lived, poorly enough, in
Richmond Terrace, Clapham, close to her father and mother--to Harrow,
then, she betook herself, into lodgings over a grocer's shop, and set
herself to look for a house. This grocer was a very pompous man, fond
of long words, and patronised the young widow exceedingly, and one day
my mother related with much amusement how he had told her that she was
sure to get on if she worked hard. "Look at me!" he said, swelling
visibly with importance; "I was once a poor boy, witho