FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   >>   >|  
lone, among I knew not how many men of all sorts of characters. "'It was not fair of you, Sir,' I said; 'I never thought but what you were married when you took me up so natural.' "'But really, Peggy, you are the very person we want here, and I can make it worth your while to stay. You want good wages, and you will get them; you are not a child, and you can take care of yourself. It is hard that because I am so unlucky as to have no wife, I am to have neither cleanliness nor comfort. Make the best of a bad bargain, Peggy; I confess that your eagerness after good wages led me too far, but I felt the temptation strong. Try the place for a week, and if you do not like it, you can go back. Mr. Phillips's drays are going into town, and if you cannot make up your mind to be contented here, you can return to Melbourne with them.' "I took the measure of Mr. Brandon that week, and I came to the determination that I ought to stay. To be sure it was wrong of him to fetch me out on false pretences, as it were, but I had walked into the trap myself, and, as he said, he was in great need of a servant. He might be weak, but he was not wicked; at least, I felt that I could hold my own. It was a rough place for a gentleman to live in. Am I wearying you, young ladies? I could leave off now, and go on the morn's night." "I am interested very much in your story," said Elsie. "And so am I," said Jane. "I know not where fortune, or rather, as you more properly call it, Providence may send us; and your experience has a peculiar fascination to me. Do, pray, go on." "Well, as I was saying, it was a rough place, and he was a gentleman in his up-bringing and in many of his ways. You would not have believed, if you had seen him in Melbourne, and heard him speak such English, that he could go about in an old ragged, dirty shooting-coat, with a cabbage-tree hat as black as a coal nearly--that he could live in a slab hut, with a clay, or rather, a dirt floor, and a window-bole with no glass in it--and that he could have all the cooking and half the work of the house done at the fireside he sat at, and sit down at a table without a table-cloth, and drink tea out of tin pannikins. The notion of getting such wages in a place with such surroundings quite dumb-founded me; and he had the things too; for by-and-by I found napery and china in a big chest that I used for a table out of doors; and bit by bit I made great improvements at Barragong.
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Melbourne

 

gentleman

 

fortune

 
English
 
believed
 

Providence

 
peculiar
 

experience

 

properly

 

fascination


bringing
 

window

 

notion

 

surroundings

 

pannikins

 
founded
 

improvements

 

Barragong

 

things

 
napery

cabbage

 
ragged
 

shooting

 

fireside

 

cooking

 

interested

 

unlucky

 
cleanliness
 

eagerness

 

confess


bargain

 

comfort

 

characters

 

thought

 

person

 

married

 

natural

 

temptation

 

strong

 

wicked


servant

 

walked

 

ladies

 

wearying

 

pretences

 

Phillips

 
contented
 

return

 

determination

 

measure