CHAPTER II.
I was taken home on the appointed day to suffer the trial—a hard one even at my tender years—of witnessing my mother’s passionate grief and my father’s mute despair. I remember that the scene of our first meeting after Caroline’s death was wisely and considerately shortened by my aunt, who took me out of the room. She seemed to have a confused desire to keep me from leaving her after the door had closed behind us; but I broke away and ran downstairs to the surgery, to go and cry for my lost playmate with the sharer of all our games, Uncle George.
I opened the surgery door and could see nobody. I dried my tears and looked all round the room—it was empty. I ran upstairs again to Uncle George’s garret bedroom—he was not there; his cheap hairbrush and old cast-off razor-case that
