The Magic Mirror Tales Author:William Gilbert General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1866 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: III. THE MERCER'S APPRENTICE. In a pleasant country lane leading from Bethnal Green to Houndsditch lived a very poor but very respectable widow, Dame Matears. Her means of existence were -derived from a very slender pension from the Clothworkers' Company, of which her husband had been a freeman, and from the trifle which, being a good needlewoman, she earned in making coifs for Master Longhose, a mercer in Chepe, to whom her son Luke was apprenticed. Luke Matears was now nearly out of his time, being within a few months of twenty-one years of age. He was exceedingly handsome, tall, and well-proportioned, and all who saw him said it was a pity so fine a young man should be obliged to pass his life in selling tapes and laces in a mercer-s shop. But Luke had other qualifications; he was an excellent son, and his widowed mother perfectly doated on him. He resided with her, but he left the house early in the morning, and seldom returned to it till it was late at night. The road which he was accustomed to take led him past themansion of Master Walter de Courcey; and one afternoon as he was coming home he noticed a great crowd gathered round the entrance to see a foreign nobleman alight from his litter. The circumstance interested him the more as the nobleman was so ill and weak he had to be carried in the arms of men from the litter into the house. Luke told his mother of it, who replied that she had heard in the morning that a very wealthy Venetian nobleman was expected to arrive there that night. She was acquainted with the housekeeper at Master Walter's, who occasionally used to give her little commissi...« less