Some shook hands, wished me well, promised to do all they could to help me, and before I had passed from their sight forgot my existence.
I gave up my friends.

Their help in the hour of need is a beautiful theory, but very seldom put into practice.
Just as I was growing dull and dispirited, a friend upon whom I had not called, and whose aid I had not solicited, wrote to me and offered me a situation as clerk in his office, with a salary of eighty pounds per annum, to be afterward increased.

God send to every weary heart the comfort this news brought to mine.

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.