Explore "Taken or Left" by O.F. Walton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I WENT back to Betson's that afternoon with no further information about what was going to happen to me; but at night, when I was getting my supper, my mother told me that I was going to be "the boy" at a Mrs. Tremayne's, somewhere in the country, at a place called Grassbourne. I was to clean the boots and shoes and knives, and make myself generally useful in the house; and I was also to work in the garden, and look after the pony. The hearty man, my mother told me, was Mrs. Tremayne's gardener, and lived in a cottage close to her house. He had been one of my father's schoolfellows; but he had not seen him for a long time. More than this my mother could not tell me.
Those last days at home were very hard ones for my poor mother. She looked more overdone and depressed than before. There was so much mending to be done to jackets and socks; there were two new shirts to be made, and a good pile of things to be washed and ironed, and everything must be finished and ready before Monday afternoon, when I was to set forth for my new home.