ough,
had he but thought of it, it was really more human than his own
attitude; for certainly my mother was interested and concerned in the
daily lives of her fellow creatures, though not in a cheering or
illuminating manner perhaps.

But, as I say, the deprecatory, worrying attitude had become second
nature with my mother long years before her widowhood, and had lined and
seamed her poor forehead and silvered her hair before my Rugby days
were over. Bereavement merely gave point to a mood already well
established.

That I should not return to Cambridge was decided as a matter of course
within the week of my father's funeral, when we learned that the little
he had left behind him would not even pay for the dilapidations of the
rectory. There was practically nothing, when my father's affairs were
put in order, beyond my mother's little property, a recent legacy, the
investment of which in Canadian railway stocks brought in about a
hundred and fifty a year.

Thus I found myself confronted with a sufficiently serious situation for
a young man whose training so far had no more fitted him for taking part
in any particular division of the battle of life, where the prize sought
is an income, than for the administration of the planet Mars. Rugby was
better than some of the great public schools in this respect, for a lad
with definite purposes and ambitions, but its curriculum had far less
bearing upon the working life of the age than it had upon its games and
pastimes and the affairs of nations and peoples long since passed away.
Yet Rugby belonged to a group of schools that were admittedly the best,
and certainly the most outrageously costly, of the educational
establishments of the period.

I think my sister Lucy was more shocked than any one else by the death
of our father. I say shocked, because I am not certain whether or not
the word grieved would apply accurately. For one thing, Lucy had never
before seen any dead person. Neither had I, for that matter; but Lucy
was more affected by the actual presence in the house of Death, than I
was. Twice a day for years she had kissed our father's forehead. Now and
again she had sat upon the arm of his chair and stroked his thin hair.
These demonstrations were connected, I believe, with the quest of
favours--permission, money, and so forth; but doubtless affection played
a part in them.

As for Lucy's home life, a little conversation I recall on the occasion
of her driving me