I ran to Clare with the letter in my
hands.
"Eighty pounds a year, darling!" I cried; "there is a fortune."
We had neither of us ever had much to do with money; we were quite
ignorant of its value, how far it would go, what it would purchase, etc.
It seemed an inexhaustible sum. We had cheap, comfortable apartments in
Holloway--a room for my sister and two smaller rooms for myself. When I
think of her patience, her resignation, her unvarying sweetness, her
constant cheerfulness, my heart does homage to the virtue and goodness
of women.
One fine morning in September I went for the first time to work. The
office of Lawson Brothers was in Lincoln's Inn. The elder brother seldom
if ever appeared; the younger was 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.
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