down upon us and she was gone.

All that followed was like a dream. I would have none touch my dead save
myself and her favorite sister, who was with us at the last; she wept
over her, but I could not, not even when they hid her beneath the
coffin-lid, nor all that weary way to Kensal Green, whither we took her
to lay her with her husband and her baby-son. I could not believe that
our day-dream was dead and buried, and the home destroyed ere it was
fairly made. My "house was left unto" me "desolate", and the rooms filled
with sunshine, but unlighted by her presence, seemed to reiterate to me:
"You are all alone ".

XI.

The two months after my mother's death were the dreariest my life has
known, and they were months of tolerably hard struggle. The little house
in Colby Road taxed my slender resources heavily, and the search for work
was not yet successful. I do not know how I should have managed but for
the help, ever at hand, of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott. During this time I
wrote for Mr. Scott pamphlets on Inspiration, Atonement, Mediation and
Salvation, Eternal Torture, Religious Education of Children, Natural _v._
Revealed Religion, and the few guineas thus earned were very valuable.
Their house, too, was always open to me, and this was no small help, for
often in those days the little money I had was enough to buy food for two
but not enough to buy it for three, and I would go out and study all day
at the British Museum, so as to "have my dinner in town", the said dinner
being conspicuous by its absence. If I was away for two evenings running
from the hospitable house in the terrace, Mrs. Scott would come down to
see what had happened, and many a time the supper there was of real
physical value to me. Well might I write, in 1879, when Thomas Scott lay
dead: "It was Thomas Scott whose house was open to me when my need was
sorest, and he never knew, this generous noble heart, how sometimes, when
I went in, weary and overdone, from a long day's study in the British
Museum, with scarce food to struggle through the day--he never knew how
his genial 'Well, little lady', in welcoming tone, cheered the then utter
loneliness of my life. To no living man or woman--save one--do I owe the
debt of gratitude that I owe to Thomas Scott."

The small amount of jewellery I possessed, and all my superfluous
clothes, were turned into more necessary articles, and the child, at
least, never suffered a solitary touch of want. Ma