Then there were the children, the two little ones who worshipped me, I who was to them mother, nurse, and playfellow.  Were these also to be resigned?  For awhile, at least, this complete loss was spared me, for facts (which I have not touched on in this record) came accidentally to my brother’s knowledge, and he resolved that I should have the protection of legal separation, and should not be turned wholly penniless and alone into the world.  So, when everything was arranged, I found myself possessed of my little girl, of complete personal freedom, and of a small monthly income sufficient for respectable starvation.

X.

The “world was all before us where to choose”, but circumstances narrowed the choice down to Hobson’s.  I had no ready money beyond the first month’s payment of my annuity; furnished lodgings were beyond my means, and I had nothing wherewith to buy furniture.  My brother offered me a home, on condition that I should give up my “heretical friends” and keep quiet; but, being freed from one bondage, nothing was further from my thoughts than to enter another.  Besides, I did not choose to be a burden on anyone, and I resolved to “get something to do”, to rent a tiny house, and to make a nest where my mother, my little girl, and I could live happily together.  The difficulty was the “something”; I spent various shillings in agencies, with a quite wonderful unanimity of failures.  I tried to get some fancy needlework, advertised as an infallible source of income to “ladies in reduced circumstances”; I fitted the advertisement admirably, for I was a lady, and my circumstances were decidedly reduced, but I only earned 4s. 6d. by weeks of stitching, and the materials cost nearly as much as the finished work.  I experimented with a Birmingham firm, who generously offered everyone an opportunity of adding to their incomes, and received in answer to the small fee demanded a pencil-case, with an explanation that I was to sell little articles of that description—­going as far as cruet-stands—­to my friends; I did not feel equal to springing pencil-cases and cruet-stands casually on my acquaintances, so did not start in that business.  It would be idle to relate all the things I tried, and failed in, until I began to think that the “something to do” was not so easy to find as I had expected.

I made up my mind to settle at Upper Norwood, near Mr. and Mrs. Scott, who were more than good to me in my trouble; and I fixed on a very little house in Colby Road, Gipsy Hill, to be taken from the ensuing Easter.  Then came the question of furniture; a friend of Mr. Scott’s gave me an introduction to a manufacturer, who agreed to let me have furniture for a bedroom and sitting-room, and to let me pay him by monthly instalments.  The next thing was to save a few months’ annuity, and so have a little money in hand, wherewith to buy necessaries on starting, and to this end I decided to accept a loving invitation to Folkestone, where my grandmother was living with two of my aunts, and there to seek some employment, no matter what, provided it gave me food and lodging, and enabled me to put aside my few pounds a month.