10 It was about this time that an event happened which completely changed the order of my life. My mother had hinted that I had some expectations from an uncle. These were very vague. He was my father’s brother, but they had never agreed, and we were almost strangers to each other. He died, and one day we were all surprised, not to say delighted, to hear from his executor, a Mr. Nixon, a rich merchant in London, that my uncle had left my mother four hundred pounds a year as long as she did not marry again, but at