Odds and Ends by B.M. Croker

It is scarcely possible that many women have led a more dull, monotonous, miserable life than Annie Fleude; actual want, and the real nip of actual poverty, with some variety and excitement, would have been preferable! All her days since she left school -- and she was now thirty -- had been dedicated to querulous old people. Her uncle, a paralytic, who lived at Camberwell -- in a gloomy, semi-detached house overlooking a damp garden -- had engrossed the entire summer of her youth. Her stagnant existence had been narrowed to the routine of the household, and the only breaks she enjoyed were an occasional Sunday School Treat, a Magic Lantern Lecture, or a Summer Sale!

When Mr. Jonas Fleude died he left his niece thirty pounds a year, and figuratively handed her on to his sister, Mrs. Pyzer, a deaf old lady residing in the Midlands, and here, if possible, Annie's case was worse -- she had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire!