"While and followed their father's footsteps to , (regarded, in the absence of the disabled George, as second in age) left for a new life, as the adopted heir to a wealthy, childless couple who could offer hims great prospects. Edward's benefactor was of in , son of the kinsman who had presented the Steventon living to the Revd . The unofficial adoption of children for social advantage — so strange to twenty-first-century sensibilities — was by no means uncommon in Jane Austen's time: in her own fiction it would be central to the plot in two of her six novels, with being sent to live with the haughty Bertrams, in ', and becoming the adoptive heir of his rich aunt in '. In 's case, the arrangement worked well."