tion. They made few friends, and it was Mrs
Reardon's frequently expressed desire to go and live in London, where
fortune, she thought, might be kinder to them. Reardon had all but made
up his mind to try this venture when he suddenly became a widower; after
that he never summoned energy to embark on new enterprises.

The boy was educated at an excellent local school; at eighteen he had
a far better acquaintance with the ancient classics than most lads
who have been expressly prepared for a university, and, thanks to an
anglicised Swiss who acted as an assistant in Mr Reardon's business,
he not only read French, but could talk it with a certain haphazard
fluency. These attainments, however, were not of much practical use; the
best that could be done for Edwin was to place him in the office of
an estate agent. His health was indifferent, and it seemed likely
that open-air exercise, of which he would have a good deal under the
particular circumstances of the case, might counteract the effects of
study too closely pursued.

At his father's death he came into possession (practically it was put at
his disposal at once, though he was little more than nineteen) of
about two hundred pounds--a life-insurance for five hundred had been
sacrificed to exigencies not very long before. He had no difficulty in
deciding how to use this money. His mother's desire to live in London
had in him the force of an inherited motive; as soon as possible he
released himself from his uncongenial occupations, converted into money
all the possessions of which he had not immediate need, and betook
himself to the metropolis.

To become a literary man, of course.

His capital lasted him nearly four years, for, notwithstanding his age,
he lived with painful economy. The strangest life, of almost absolute
loneliness. From a certain point of Tottenham Court Road there is
visible a certain garret window in a certain street which runs parallel
with that thoroughfare; for the greater part of these four years the
garret in question was Reardon's home. He paid only three-and-sixpence
a week for the privilege of living there; his food cost him about a
shilling a day; on clothing and other unavoidable expenses he laid
out some five pounds yearly. Then he bought books--volumes which cost
anything between twopence and two shillings; further than that he durst
not go. A strange time, I assure you.

When he had completed his twenty-first year, he desired to proc