Library / Literature & Fiction
Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood
- Pages
- about 818
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 15 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
The lady said, “An orphan’s fate
Is sad and hard to bear.”--Scott.
“If you would have the little teacher at the Miss Heath’s here for the
holidays. After all the rest, she has had the measles last and worst,
and they don’t know what to do with her, for she came from the asylum
for officers’ daughters, and has no home at all, and they must go away
to have the house purified. They can’t take her with them, for their
sister has children, and she will have to roam from room to room before
the whitewashers, which is not what I should wish in the critical state
of chest left by measles.”
“Allen. The cry was always for Miss Allen when the sick girls wanted to
be amused.”
“Allen! I wonder if it can be the same child as the one Robert was
interested about. You don’t remember, my dear. It was the year you were
at Vienna, when one of Robert’s brother-officers died on the voyage out
to China, and he sent home urgent letters for me to canvass right and
left for the orphan’s election. You know Robert writes much better than
he speaks, and I copied over and over again his account of the poor
young man to go with the cards. ‘Caroline Otway Allen, aged seven years,
whole orphan, daughter of Captain Allen, l07th Regiment;’ yes, that’s
the way it ran.”
“The year I was at Vienna, and Robert went out to China. That was eleven
years ago. She must be the very child, for she is only eighteen. They
sent her to Miss Heath’s to grow a little older, for though she was at
the head of everything at the asylum, she looks so childish that they
can’t send her out as a governess. Did you see her, mother?”
A short sample. Read the whole book
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