Accordingly I was sent at the age of sixteen for a year's finishing at the High School of Edinburgh, and the following winter began my Arts course at the university.
If Fate had been kinder to me, I think I might have become a scholar.
At any rate I was just acquiring a taste for philosophy and the dead languages when my father died suddenly of a paralytic shock, and I had to set about earning a living.
My mother was left badly off, for my poor father had never been able to save much from his modest stipend.

When all things were settled, it turned out that she might reckon on an income of about fifty pounds a year.

This was not enough to live on, however modest the household, and certainly not enough to pay for the colleging of a son.

At this point an uncle of hers stepped forward with a proposal.

He was a well-to-do bachelor, alone in the world, and he invited my mother to live with him and take care of his house.