ns.

Well, that's as far as I've got as yet. What trivial, trivial stuff,
interesting to hardly a soul under heaven, save only about three! Yet it
pleases me to write as long as I have your assurance that it pleases
you to read. Pray, give my kindest remembrances to your wife, and to
Camelford also, if he should happen to come your way. He was on the
Mississippi when last I heard.

XII. OAKLEY VILLAS, BIRCHESPOOL, 5th June, 1882.

When I had made all those dispositions which I described with such
painful prolixity in my last letter, my dear Bertie, I sat down on my
study chair, and I laid out the whole of my worldly wealth upon the
table in front of me. I was startled when I looked at it,--three
half-crowns, a florin, and four sixpences, or eleven and sixpence in
all. I had expected to hear from Cullingworth before this; but at least
he was always there, a trusty friend, at my back. Immediately upon
engaging the house I had written him a very full letter, telling him
that I had committed myself to keeping it for one year, but assuring him
that I was quite convinced that with the help which he had promised me
I should be able to hold my own easily. I described the favourable
position of the house, and gave him every detail of the rent and
neighbourhood. That letter would, I was sure, bring a reply from him
which would contain my weekly remittance. One thing I had, above all,
determined upon. That was that, whatever hardships might lie before me,
I would fight through them without help from home. I knew, of course,
that my mother would have sold everything down to her gold eye-glasses
to help me, and that no thought of our recent disagreement would have
weighed with her for an instant; but still a man has his feelings, you
know, and I did not propose to act against her judgment and then run
howling for help.

I sat in my house all day, with that ever-present sense of privacy and
novelty which had thrilled me when I first shut the street door behind
me. At evening I sallied out and bought a loaf of bread, half a pound
of tea ("sweepings," they call it, and it cost eightpence), a tin
kettle (fivepence), a pound of sugar, a tin of Swiss milk, and a tin
of American potted meat. I had often heard my mother groan over the
expenses of housekeeping, and now I began to understand what she meant.
Two and ninepence went like a flash, but at least I had enough to keep
myself going for some days.

There was a convenient