Explore "The Orphan" by Guy de Maupassant on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Mademoiselle Source had adopted the boy under very sad circumstances. At the time, she was thirty-six years old, and her deformity (when a little girl she had slipped from her nurse's knee into the fire, and her face had been horribly burnt and was a terrible sight) had determined her not to marry, for she did not want to be married for her money.
A neighbour, who was with child when she became a widow, died in her confinement, leaving no money at all. Mademoiselle Source looked after the baby, put it out to nurse, brought it up, sent it to school, and then took the boy home when he was fourteen that she might have someone to love her in the empty house, someone to look after her and to sweeten her old age.