perhaps I had better hold my tongue on that subject; for what is the
good of shocking people unless one has a very good reason for doing so?

My father's pedigree did not help him into good practice, and he died
young--a grave mistake, people tell me, for a professional man to
commit. My mother was very pretty and very helpless, but then she had a
pedigree, too, and, probably, that forbade her to soil her white hands.
She was a fine lady, with more heart than head, which she had lost most
unwisely to the handsome young doctor. After his death, she made futile
efforts for her child's sake, but the grinding wheel of poverty caught
the poor butterfly and crushed her to death.

My poor, tender-hearted, unhappy mother! Well, the world is a cruel
place to these soft, unprotected natures.

I should have fared badly but for Aunt Agatha; her hardly-earned savings
were all spent on my education. She was a clever, highly-educated woman,
and commanded good salaries, and out of this she contrived to board and
maintain me at a school until she married, and Uncle Keith promised that
I should share their home.

I never could understand why Aunt Agatha married him. Perhaps she was
tired of the drudgery of teaching; at forty-five one may grow a little
weary of one's work. Perhaps she wanted a home for her old age, and was
tired of warming herself at other people's fires, and preferred a
chimney corner of her own; but, strange to say, she always scouted these
two notions with the utmost indignation.

"I married your uncle, Merle," she would say, with great dignity,
"because he convinced me that he was the right person for me to marry. I