Aunt Deborah

Aunt Deborah, by Mary Russell
Mitford

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Title: Aunt Deborah
Author: Mary Russell Mitford
Release Date: October 2, 2007 [EBook #22843]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUNT
DEBORAH ***

Produced by David Widger

AUNT DEBORAH.
By Mary Russell Mitford
A crosser old woman than Mrs. Deborah Thornby was certainly not to

be found in the whole village of Hilton. Worth, in country phrase, a
power of money, and living (to borrow another rustic expression) upon
her means, the exercise of her extraordinary faculty for grumbling and
scolding seemed the sole occupation of her existence, her only pursuit,
solace, and amusement; and really it would have been a great pity to
have deprived the poor woman of a pastime so consolatory to herself,
and which did harm to nobody: her family consisting only of an old
labourer, to guard the house, take care of her horse, her cow, and her
chaise and cart, and work in the garden, who was happily, for his
comfort, stone deaf, and could not hear her vituperation, and of a parish
girl of twelve, to do the indoor work, who had been so used to be
scolded all her life, that she minded the noise no more than a miller
minds the clack of his mill, or than people who live in a churchyard
mind the sound of the church bells, and would probably, from long
habit, have felt some miss of the sound had it ceased, of which, by the
way, there was small danger, so long as Mrs. Deborah continued in this
life. Her crossness was so far innocent that it hurt nobody except
herself. But she was also cross-grained, and that evil quality is
unluckily apt to injure other people; and did so very materially in the
present instance.
Mrs. Deborah was the only daughter of old Simon Thornby, of Chalcott
great farm; she had had one brother, who having married the
rosy-cheeked daughter of the parish clerk, a girl with no portion except
her modesty, her good-nature, and her prettiness, had been discarded by
his father, and after trying various ways to gain a living, and failing in
all, had finally died broken-hearted, leaving the unfortunate clerk's
daughter, rosy-cheeked no longer, and one little boy, to the tender
mercy of his family. Old Simon showed none. He drove his son's
widow from the door as he had before driven off his son; and when he
also died, an event which occurred within a year or two, bequeathed all
his property to his daughter Deborah.
This bequest was exceedingly agreeable to Mrs. Deborah, (for she was
already of an age to assume that title,) who valued money, not certainly
for the comforts and luxuries which it may be the means of procuring,
nor even for its own sake, as the phrase goes, but for that which, to a

woman of her temper, was perhaps the highest that she was capable of
enjoying, the power which wealth confers over all who are connected
with or dependent on its possessor.
The principal subjects of her despotic dominion were the young widow
and her boy, whom she placed in a cottage near her own house, and
with whose comfort and happiness she dallied pretty much as a cat
plays with the mouse which she has got into her clutches, and lets go
only to catch again, or an angler with the trout which he has fairly
hooked, and merely suffers to struggle in the stream until it is
sufficiently exhausted to bring to land. She did not mean to be cruel,
but she could not help it; so her poor mice were mocked with the
semblance of liberty, although surrounded by restraints; and the awful
paw seemingly sheathed in velvet, whilst they were in reality never out
of reach of the horrors of the pat.
It sometimes, however, happens that the little mouse makes her escape
from madam pussy at the very moment when she seems to have the
unlucky trembler actually within her claws; and so it occurred in the
present instance.
The dwelling to which Mrs. Deborah retired after the death of her
father, was exceedingly romantic and beautiful in point of situation. It
was a small but picturesque farm-house, on the very banks of the
Loddon, a small branch of which, diverging from the parent stream,
and crossed by a pretty footbridge, swept round the homestead, the
orchard and garden,