Aunt Deborah | Page 3

new
legatees whenever the old displeased her, had not been sufficient to
induce her to make one,--the threat did as well,) and never to speak to
either of them again as long as she lived.
She proclaimed this resolution at the rate of twelve times an hour, (that
is to say, once in five minutes,) every day for a fortnight; and in spite of
her well-known caprice, there seemed for once in her life reason to
believe that she would keep her word.

Those prudent and sagacious persons who are so good as to take the
superintendence of other people's affairs, and to tell by the look of the
foot where the shoe pinches and where it does not, all united in blaming
the poor widow for withdrawing herself and her son from Mrs.
Deborah's protection. But besides that no human being can adequately
estimate the misery of leading a life of dependence upon one to whom
scolding was as the air she breathed, without it she must die, a
penurious dependence too, which supplied grudgingly the humblest
wants, and yet would not permit the exertions by which she would
joyfully have endeavoured to support herself;--besides the temptation
to exchange Mrs. Deborah's incessant maundering for the Miller's
rough kindness, and her scanty fare for the coarse plenty of his
board,--besides these homely but natural temptations--hardly to be
adequately allowed for by those who have passed their lives amidst
smiling kindness and luxurious abundance; besides these motives she
had a stronger and dearer in her desire to rescue her boy from the
dangers of an enforced and miserable idleness, and to put him in the
way of earning his bread by honest industry.
Through the interest of his grandfather the parish clerk, the little
Edward had been early placed in the Hilton free school, where he had
acquitted himself so much to the satisfaction of the master, that at
twelve years old he was the head boy on the foundation, and took
precedence of the other nine-and-twenty wearers of the full-skirted blue
coats, leathern belts, and tasseled caps, in the various arts of reading,
writing, cyphering, and mensuration. He could flourish a swan without
ever taking his pen from the paper. Nay, there is little doubt but from
long habit he could have flourished it blindfold, like the man who had
so often modelled the wit of Ferney in breadcrumbs, that he could
produce little busts of Voltaire with his hands under the table; he had
not his equal in Practice or the Rule of Three, and his piece, when sent
round at Christmas, was the admiration of the whole parish.
Unfortunately, his arrival at this pre-eminence was also the signal of his
dismissal from the free school. He returned home to his mother, and as
Mrs. Deborah, although hourly complaining of the expense of
supporting a great lubberly boy in idleness, refused to appentice him to

any trade, and even forbade his finding employment in helping her deaf
man of all work to cultivate her garden, which the poor lad, naturally
industrious and active, begged her permission to do, his mother,
considering that no uncertain expectations of money at the death of his
kinswoman could counterbalance the certain evil of dragging on his
days in penury and indolence during her life, wisely determined to
betake herself to the mill, and accept John Stokes's offer of sending
Edward to a friend in town, for the purpose of being placed with a civil
engineer:--a destination with which the boy himself--a fine intelligent
youth, by the way, tall and manly, with black eyes that talked and
laughed, and curling dark hair,--was delighted in every point of view.
He longed for a profession for which he had a decided turn; he longed
to see the world as personified by the city of cities, the unparagoned
London; and he longed more than either to get away from Aunt
Deborah, the storm of whose vituperation seemed ringing in his ears so
long as he continued within sight of her dwelling. One would think the
clack of the mill and the prattle of his pretty cousin Cicely might have
drowned it, but it did not. Nothing short of leaving the spinster fifty
miles behind, and setting the great city between him and her, could
efface the impression.
"I hope I am not ungrateful," thought Edward to himself, as he was
trudging London-ward after taking a tender leave of all at the mill; "I
hope I am not ungrateful. I do not think I am, for I would give my right
arm, ay, or my life, if it would serve master John Stokes or please dear
Cissy. But really I do hope never to come within hearing of Aunt
Deborah again, she storms so. I wonder whether all old women