The doctors declared it to be a spinal complaint, from which she was not likely to recover, although she might live for years.
She was unable to move, but lay always on a couch or sofa.

The first glimpse of her altered face, so sweet, so sad and colorless, made my heart ache.
All the youth and bloom had died out of it.
My mother did not live many days; at her death her income ceased, and I found myself, at twenty, obliged to begin the world as best I could, the sole protector of my invalid sister.

The first step was to sell our little home, a pretty cottage at Hempstead, then to take lodgings nearer the city; after that I set vigorously to work to look for a situation.
Ah, me, that weary task! I wonder if any of my readers ever went quite alone, friendless, almost helpless, into the great, modern Babylon, to look for a situation; if so, they will know how to pity me.

I spent many pounds in advertisements; I haunted the agency offices; I answered every advertisement I read--it seemed all in vain.
My father's regiment was then in India, but I wrote to several of the officers, who had known and valued him.

Then, as a last resource, I looked up the few friends my mother had.
If there is one thing more dreary than looking for a situation, it is what is commonly called "hunting up one's friends." I found many, but some were old and indifferent, others too much engrossed in their own affairs to have any time to devote to mine.