The Project Gutenberg EBook of 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: ASCII

*** 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-