The Real Lady Hilda by B.M. Croker

"Too early for the lamp, I suppose, and yet too dark to read a line." And my stepmother closed her novel, with an impatient snap, as she added, "This is the worst of these horrid, poky lodgings; one never can have anything at the time one wants it. What a dismal little den it is, Gwen! What possessed us to come here?"

I could have answered the question promptly and briefly in a single word "Poverty;" but, as it was a term my relative specially detested, I merely shrugged my shoulders, and continued to gaze into the miserable apology for a garden which ran between our quarters and the high street of Stonebrook, an insignificant market town in Sussex.