On the day after the funeral I got the only letter I ever received from my grandfather. It did not pretend to any grief over the dead, and it informed me, in a courteously acidulated way, that he did not wish to see me and that I had nothing to expect from him. But it enclosed a cheque for two hundred pounds, to cover present expenses and until I was able to get work. Now, I think a really fine and high-spirited girl out of a penny book would have torn that cheque in half and sent it back to him with a few dignified words. But I did not see why my butcher and baker and candlestick maker should be called upon to finance my exhibition of a proud and imperious nature. That was what it would have come to, for we owed money to the butcher and the baker, and I do not doubt we should have owed it to the candlestick maker as well, but for the fact that there was no candlestick maker in the village. So I wrote:-- “DEAR GRANDPAPA,--Thanks very much for the two hundred pounds, which will be most useful, but you don’t seem to know how to write a letter to a girl who has just lost her father. I shan’t bother you.--Your affectionate granddaughter, “WILHELMINA.” Then the parson and the doctor came round, and they were two good men. The doctor said that medical etiquette did not permit him to make any charge to an orphan girl, and that if he took my money he would be hounded out of the profession, and quite properly. But I told him that I thought he was lying, and made him take the money. As it was, he had given us any amount of his care and time and charged about half nothing for it. He was not a rich man either. The parson said that his wife wanted someone to act as a companion and to assist in looking after the little girls. I thanked him very much, but I said that I believed, if she thought it over, she would find that she didn’t. They gave me lots of good advice, and when I sold all the furniture and effects they bid frantically against one another for the six bottles of distinctly inferior sherry which at that time constituted our entire cellar. Other friends did similar acts of kindness at the sale. I had meant it to be a perfectly genuine sale, but all the time I felt that I was passing round the hat. I do not think the auctioneer has ever forgotten it. The way that sherry, with the maker’s name giving it away on every bottle, fetched the price of a vintage Chateau d’Yquem of great age, must have made an indelible impression.