Meanwhile, the large and happy family was being gradually broken up. First the beloved father passed away. On the same day that, three years before, had witnessed his death, their mother, too, was taken to her rest, and shortly after, the two sisters went to Croydon, to superintend their widowed brother’s home. Miss Carey’s real vocation in life seemed to spring up, and the literary work was but fitfully carried on, for, on the marriage of her sister to the Rev. Canon Simpson, vicar of Kirkby Stephen, Westmoreland, and the subsequent death of her brother, the sole charge of the young orphans devolved upon her. As the years rolled by, circumstances tended to break up that home also. The young people grew up and scattered, and out of Miss Carey’s four charges three are now married. Then, her pleasurable duties being accomplished, the partially disused pen was resumed, and the author found leisure to return to literary pursuits. She has for the last twelve years made her home in the ancient and historic village of Putney, which, although it has lost much of its quaint and picturesque environment since the destruction of the toll-house and the old bridge of 1729, with its twenty narrow openings—erstwhile the delight of artists—has yet a few “bits” left that have escaped the hands of the Philistines. Miss Carey’s pretty red-brick house of the Queen Anne style of architecture, and into which she has only more recently moved, is situated near the bend of the road. A broad gravelled path, running the whole length of the house in front, is bordered with shrubs and flowering plants. The spacious hall opens on the right and front into the chief living-rooms, the long French windows of which lead into the conservatory. One of the great attractions of the commodious and artistic residence is the pleasant garden at the back, at once the pride and delight of the author, where countless blackbirds, thrushes, and other singing-birds, are wont to congregate, and where in summer, under the gigantic chestnut tree with its widely-spreading branches, she and her home-mates spend many a happy hour. The home party consists likewise of her widowed sister, Mrs. Simpson, and of her friend, Helen Marion Burnside, the well-known poet and author of _The Deaf Girl Next Door_, and of a lately-published volume entitled _Driftweed_.