The chapter opens with a flashback to a time when the narrator was living with his parents in a small town in the south of England. The narrator tells us that he used to work for a newspaper in London, but that his parents died when he was a young child. He tells the story of his mother's death, and how he was forced to leave the family home and go to live with his aunt and uncle in a boarding house in the town of Dorking, Surrey, in order to make ends meet. He also tells the tale of his father's marriage to a woman who was a member of the same family as his mother. He says that his mother was a good woman, but his father was a terrible man. He explains that his father died when the family moved to London, and that he had to leave his mother and sister behind