moment, and then I fell to sobbing. All my strength seemed to have departed from me when I fainted, and I felt in a state of utter collapse. Dr. Algar spoke of it as "nervous prostration."

"Come, come, Nan, this won't do," said my mother severely; "you must be brave and face your trouble like a woman. It's a great disappointment, I know, but crying won't help matters, and it might be so much worse."

"I can't see how it could be worse," I cried perversely.

"Can't you?" said mother, with a quaver in her voice. "I can very clearly."

Then, as I continued to sob, she fetched me a glass of hot milk and a biscuit, for the doctor had advised my taking as much light nourishment as possible. Certainly I felt better when I had taken it, though the prospect of the future did not brighten.

"Mother," I said, "what nonsense Dr. Algar talks! How could you send me away into the country? And I am sure I do not want to go. I should be miserable away from you all."

"That would depend on where you went," said my mother. "I wish I could ask your Aunt Patty to take you; but with her husband so sadly she will not want another invalid on her hands."

"Oh, mother, don't call me an invalid!" I exclaimed impatiently.

She smiled and went on as if I had not spoken.

"No, if your uncle were well, it would be different; but as things are, I cannot send you. I do not see what is to be done; but I must talk it over with your father."

Then she went away to attend to her domestic duties, and I lay back on my pillows, feeling utterly limp and wretched. Mother had bidden me be brave, but I was far from brave at that hour. My mood was one of flat rebellion against the doctor's decree. A whole year without study! How could I bear it? It was preposterous. He need not think I was going to obey him. It would mean that I should be earning nothing all that time, a burden on my parents' straitened means, an additional care to my mother, whose anxieties were so numerous.

I was the second in a family of five girls and one small pickle of a boy. We lived in a long, uninteresting road, which, being treeless, was called an avenue, running between Wandsworth Road and Clapham Common. Ours was a refined but by no means a luxurious home. My father was a man of science and the curator of a learned society. His 

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