Australian Tales - Setis

descended so smartly on my tight corduroys. ‘O my, sir! pray don't hit
me again; I'll never do so any more, sir!’ ‘What do you mean by robbing
my garden? You young gaol-bird!’ shouted the squire. ‘I was only
picking a pink for Nanny Roseley, sir,’ I sobbed. ‘Who is Nanny
Roseley?’ he asked. ‘She is a little girl who goes to our school, please
sir.’ ‘You had better take care she does not lead you to the gallows,’ he
replied gruffly, at the same time giving me another blow with the stick;
whereupon I thought I had enough stick for one pink, so I made use of
my young legs, and ran off with two large pink stripes on my person,
which of course I kept to myself.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” chuckled Mr. Dovecott. “What an old goose Squire
Leveret was to utter such a sentiment as that! I remember feeling more
indignant with him for thus defaming my Nanny, than I did for his
striking me with the switch, and I was strongly tempted to throw a stone
at his head; but I am glad that I did not. Lead me to the gallows indeed!
Why the dear soul has all her lifetime been leading me to Heaven. Her
gentle, sympathetic counsel has often chased away the ruffles from my
troubled brow, and her honeyed words have sweetened many a bitter
sorrow. Her tender nursing hand has softened many a throb of pain; and
her example of Christian patience, meekness, and love, has had more
influence on my soul than all the doctrinal sermons I ever heard
preached. But I must not say any more about her virtues, for I see she is
blushing again, and I would not cause her a moment's uneasiness, even to
give myself a month of pleasure.”
Chapter II.
AFTER passing a few good-natured strictures on Squire Leverett's
angry prognostications, Mr. Dovecott thus resumed his narrative: —
“A short time afterwards I was taken from Dame Tingle's, and sent to
Mr. Wagstaff's school — about five miles off — as a weekly boarder; so
I only saw Nanny on Sundays, in our village church. I loved to sit and
look at her, in her brown beaver bonnet with red ribbons, and her
nankeen tippet and sleeves; and I used to wonder if it were wicked for
me to think her ten times prettier than the little mahogany angels that sat
on the top of the organ. If it happened to be a wet day, and she was not at
church, I always felt something like a dry cork sticking in my throat, and
when I attempted to sing I would sometimes burst out crying, which
usually gained me a dose of rhubarb when I got home, for my mother
used to think I was poorly.
“At fourteen years old I was apprenticed to Mr. Smalts, the grocer, on
our village green, and Nanny, who had grown a fine big girl, often came
to the shop with her little market basket. I always tried to serve her,
though I began to feel unaccountably shy of speaking to her, much more