In
Wattleborough and the neighbourhood opinions varied greatly as to
this gentleman's character, but women seldom spoke very
favourably of him. Miss Harrow was reticent concerning her
brother-in-law; no one, however, had any reason to believe that
she found life under his roof disagreeable. That she lived with
him at all was of course occasionally matter for comment, certain
Wattleborough ladies having their doubts regarding the position
of a deceased wife's sister under such circumstances; but no one
was seriously exercised about the relations between this sober
lady of forty-five and a man of sixty-three in broken health.
A word of the family history.
John, Alfred, and Edmund Yule were the sons of a Wattleborough
stationer. Each was well educated, up to the age of seventeen, at
the town's grammar school. The eldest, who was a hot-headed lad,
but showed capacities for business, worked at first with his
father, endeavouring to add a bookselling department to the trade
in stationery; but the life of home was not much to his taste,
and at one-and-twenty he obtained a clerk's place in the office
of a London newspaper.
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