o years
afterwards had married a young barrister who was a frequent visitor at
the house.

Mr. Andrews was looked upon as a rising man, and for the first seven or
eight years of her marriage his wife's life had been a very happy one.
Then her husband was prostrated by a fever which he caught in one of the
midland towns while on circuit, and although he partially recovered he
was never himself again. His power of work seemed to be lost; a languor
which he could not overcome took possession of him. A troublesome cough
ere long attacked him, and two years later Mrs. Andrews was a widow, and
her boy, then nine years old, an orphan.

During the last two years of his life Mr. Andrews had earned but
little in his profession. The comfortable house which he occupied had
been given up, and they had removed to one much smaller. But in spite
of this, debts mounted up, and when, after his death, the remaining
furniture was sold and everything settled, there remained only about
two hundred pounds. Mrs. Andrews tried to get some pupils among her
late husband's friends, but during the last two years she had lost
sight of many of these, and now met with but poor success among the
others. She was a quiet and retiring woman, and shrank from continuous
solicitations, and at the end of three years she found her little
store exhausted.

Hitherto she had kept George at school, but could no longer do so,
and, giving up her lodging in Brompton, went down to Croydon, where
someone had told her that they thought she would have a better chance
of obtaining pupils, but the cards which some of the tradesmen allowed
her to put in the window led to no result, and finding this to be the
case she applied at one of the milliner's for work. This she obtained,
and for a year supported herself and her boy by needlework.

From the time when George left school she had gone on teaching him his
lessons; but on the day when he was thirteen years old he declared
that he would no longer submit to his mother working for both of them,
and, setting out, called at shop after shop inquiring if they wanted
an errand-boy. He succeeded at last in getting a place at a grocer's
where he was to receive three shillings a week and his meals, going
home to sleep at night in the closet-like little attic adjoining the
one room which his mother could now afford.

For a while they were more comfortable than they had been for some
time; now that his mother had no longer George