And so in a big, shabby room, with furniture of one-time grandeur, Ethel Bannister told her story--and a strange enough story it was.
She had come from Edinburgh a little over three months previously, her widowed mother having died very suddenly. The annuity they had been living on ending with her mother's death, she had written to her distinguished uncle, the Professor, whom she had never seen, asking him if he could put her in the way of earning a living as secretary to one of his friends.
Then, rather to her surprise, he had offered her a post himself with 50 a year salary to begin with. But she was on no account to tell anyone where she was coming to. So many people wrote to him for assistance, he said, and if it were known he had helped anyone, then everyone would expect him to do t
