always there. He gave me a very kindly
welcome, said he hoped I should not find my work tiresome, showed me
what I had to do, and, altogether, set me at my ease.

I sighed many times that morning to find of how little use was my
college education to me now and I sighed to think how all my dreams, all
my hopes and aspirations, had ended behind a clerk's desk, with eighty
pounds per annum in lieu of the fortune of which I had dreamed.

After a few days I became used to the novelty and did my best to
discharge my duties well.

Hundreds of young men in London lead lives similar to mine, with very
little variety; the only way in which I differed from them was that I
had my sister Clare to provide for. Alas! how soon I found out what a
small sum eighty pounds a year was! When we had paid the rent of our
three rooms, set aside a small sum for clothes and a small sum for food,
there was nothing left. Clare, whose appetite was dainty and delicate,
suffered greatly. I could not manage to provide even a bunch of grapes
for her; the trifling coppers I spent in flowers, that cheered her as
nothing else ever did, were sorely missed.

How I longed sometimes to take home a ripe peach, a bottle of wine, an
amusing book! But every penny was rigorously needed; there was not one
to spare. How I pitied her for the long hours she spent alone in those
solitary lodgings! A bright inspiration came to me one day; I thought
how glad I should be if I could get some work to do at night, if it were
but possible to earn a few shillings. I advertised again, and after some
time succeeded in getting copying to do, for which I was not overwell
paid.

I earned a pound--positively a whole golden sovereign--and when it lay
in my hand my joy was too great for words. What should I do with one
sovereign and such a multiplicity of wants? Do not laugh at me, reader,
when I tell you what I did do, after long and anxious debate with
myself. I paid a quarter's subscription at Mudie's, so that my poor
sister should have something to while away the dreary hours of the long
day. With the few shillings left I bought her a bottle of wine and some
oranges.

That is years ago, but tears rise in my eyes now when I remember her
pretty joy, how gratefully she thanked me, how delicious she found the
wine, how she made me taste it, how she opened the books one after
another, and could hardly believe that every day she would have the same
happiness--three books, three be