appentice

Updated: May 3, 2025

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.

Mary Russell Mitford - Aunt Deborah