But now I must finish my errand and go, for I know you're longing to be at those books. Do you get a ferruling every time you miss a word?--and enjoy the pain because it pleases papa to inflict it?
Showing that the author at least had some awareness of what he/she was writing. The heck?
That last part gets way squicky to me though.
shudder
Elsie has a friend, Herbert, who is obviously trying to work up the courage to ask her to marry him. Herbert has a bad leg and walks with a crutch, and sometimes "the disease" comes back and brings more pain. (At first, when Herbert was described, it sounded as if he had broken his hip and it hadn't healed properly, but now that they keep mentioning "the disease," I have no idea what it is. My first thought was polio, but he was allowed to have visitors all the time when he was first sick, as long as they didn't tire him out too much, so that doesn't sound like polio at all. So I have no idea.) I'm kind of dreading what makes Elsie say she can't marry him.
I bet he dies in a convenient, yet heartrending, fashion.
Well, so far, the scene has ended with this:
Herbert, it will all have to be just as papa says. I belong to him, and cannot give myself away without his permission.
Before that, she'd given him several reasons why she couldn't marry him, all of which were essentially "we're too young" -- she's 15, and he just turned 16.
I thought tuberculosis would make him weak, but not cause pain and weakness in a specific joint like that. (And they keep mentioning it as his "limb," because apparently you don't say "leg" in mixed company.)
I wonder if Herbert gets a miracle cure.
I'm slightly boggled by how closely the parent/child diction echoes contemporary B&D wording.