e slightest; at twelve years of age he was
already supporting himself, or, one would say, keeping himself above the
point of starvation; and at three-and-twenty--the age when Wilfrid Athel
is entering upon life in the joy of freedom--was ludicrously bankrupt, a
petty business he had established being sold up for a debt something
short of as many pounds as he had years. He drifted into indefinite
mercantile clerkships, an existence possibly preferable to that of the
fourth circle of Inferno, and then seemed at length to have fallen upon
a piece of good luck, such as, according to a maxim of pathetic optimism
wherewith he was wont to cheer himself, must come to every man sooner or
later--provided he do not die of hunger whilst it is on the way. He
married a schoolmistress, one Miss Martin, who was responsible for the
teaching of some twelve or fifteen children of tender age, and who, what
was more, owned the house in which she kept school. The result was that
James Hood once more established himself in business, or rather in
several businesses, vague, indescribable, save by those who are unhappy
enough to understand such matters--a commission agency, a life insurance
agency and a fire insurance ditto, I know not what. Yet the semblance of
prosperity was fleeting. As if connection with him meant failure, his
wife's school, which she had not abandoned (let us employ negative terms
in speaking of this pair), began to fall off; ultimately no school was
left. It did in truth appear that Miss Martin had suffered something in
becoming Mrs. Hood. At her marriage she was five-and-twenty, fairly
good-looking, in temper a trifle exigent perhaps, sanguine, and capable
of exertion; she could not claim more than superficial instruction, but
taught reading and writing with the usual success which attends teachers
of these elements. After the birth of her first child, Emily, her moral
nature showed an unaccountable weakening; the origin was no doubt
physical, but in story-telling we dwell very much on the surface of
things; it is not permitted us to describe human nature too accurately.
The exigence of her temper became something generally described by a
harsher term; she lost her interest in the work which she had
unwillingly entrusted for a time to an assistant; she found the
conditions of her life hard. Alas, they grew harder. After Emily, two
children were successively born; fate was kind to them, and neither
survived infancy. Their mo