He kept
his books there, his rows of pipes and towering little heap of half-
filled match-boxes, and there he wrote his clever studies that yet
were unproductive of much gold and brought him little more than
pleasant notices and occasional letters from enthusiastic strangers.
It seemed very unremunerative labour indeed, and the family had done
well to migrate from Essex into Switzerland, where, besides the
excellent schools which cost barely two pounds annually per head, the
children learned the language and enjoyed the air of forest and
mountain into the bargain. Life, for all that, was a severe problem to
them, and the difficulty of making both ends come in sight of each
other, let alone meeting, was an ever-present one. That they jogged
along so well was due more than the others realised to the untiring
and selfless zeal of the Irish mother, a plucky, practical woman, and
a noble one if ever such existed on this earth. The way she contrived
would fill a book; her economies, so clever they hardly betrayed
themselves, would supply a comic annual with material for years,
though their comedy involved a pathos of self-denial and sleepless
nights that only those similarly placed could have divined. Herself a
silent, even inarticulate, woman, she never spoke of them, least of
all to her husband, whose mind it was her brave desire to keep free
from unnecessary worries for his work.
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