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 have no more idea than you how he contrived to instil this notion into my head, for though I am a plain body and never had any beauty, I must own I liked tall, good-looking men.  But there, my dear, I lived forty-five years in the world without three things very common in women’s lives—­without beauty, without love, and without discontent.”  And in this last clause she was certainly right.  Aunt Agatha was the most contented creature in the world.

If Uncle Keith—­for never, never would I call him Uncle Ezra, even had he asked me as a personal favour to do so—­if Uncle Keith had been rich I could have understood the marriage better, being rather a mercenary and far-sighted young person, but he had only a very small income.  He was managing clerk in some mercantile house, and, being a thrifty soul, invested all his spare cash instead of spending it.

Aunt Agatha had lived in grand houses all her life, but she was quite content with the little cottage at Putney to which her husband took her.  They only kept one servant; but Aunt Agatha proved herself to be a notable housekeeper.  She arranged and rearranged the old-fashioned furniture that had belonged to Uncle Keith’s mother until she had made quite a charming drawing-room; but that was just her way; she had clever brains, and clever fingers, and to manipulate old materials into new fashions was just play work to her.

But for me, I am perfectly convinced that Aunt Agatha would have called herself the happiest woman in the world, but my discontent leavened the household.  If three people elect to live together, the success of the scheme demands that one of the three should not smile sourly on all occasions.

For two whole years I tried to be amiable when Uncle Keith was in the room, and at last gave up the attempt in despair, baffled by my own evil tempers, and yet I will say I was not a bad-tempered girl.  I must have had good in me or Aunt Agatha would not have been so fond of me.  I call that a real crucial test—­other people’s fondness for us.