Australian Tales - Setis

monkey, or I shall kick you into the duck-pond!’
“ ‘Oh, Mr. Roseley, I beg your pardon,’ I timidly stammered, ‘you
make a mistake, sir. I don't want to marry her — — ’
“ ‘Eh, what! Then what the dickens do you want with her?’ roared the
old man, stopping me before I had half said my say, for I meant I did not
want to marry her for five years. ‘Confound your impudence! Let me get
hold of you! Here, Boxer, Boxer, Boxer! Hool him, boy! hool him!’
“Boxer was a large mastiff that I had often seen following Nanny, as if
to protect her, and as I was always timid of dogs, I did not wait till Boxer
arrived from the back of the house, but away I went with my heart in my
mouth, as the saying is, and jumped over the garden gate just as the dog
was about to spoil my Sunday pantaloons. You can have no idea, sir,
what a humble opinion I had of myself as I retraced my steps across the
fields. When I got home I told my mother all about my misadventure,
and she said I was a young gosling for not telling her what I was going to
do, and she would have advised me how to go about it better. I ought to
have borne in mind, she said, that my father was nearly thirty years old
when he went courting; — moreover, he had a farm of his own, and a
good house to take a wife to, ‘little matters which generally
counterbalance roughness of address, in a great measure, as the times
go.’ She further told me, ‘that I might have been sure Mr. Roseley would
not let an apprentice-boy marry his daughter; that I ought to have gently
told him I loved Nanny, and asked his permission to pay my addresses to
her.’ Of course, that was all I wanted, — I only wished to secure my
pretty bird, lest she should fly away with some other mate; but I sadly
blundered in my way of making known my wishes and purpose, and I
had not courage to go to Mr. Roseley again with explanations, for I
dreaded Boxer's teeth, and the horsewhip behind the door. Nanny never
came to our shop after that, so I thought my chance of caging her was
very small indeed, and the mental distress I suffered in consequence I
cannot well describe. To add to my torment, too, Tom Bullskin had by
some means got hold of the story of my running away from the dog; and
sometimes, when he was out of the range of my fist, he would whistle,
and call out ‘Boxer, hool him, boy!’
“When I was twenty-one years old my apprenticeship expired, and I
accepted an engagement with a London wholesale house which supplied
my master with dry-saltery goods. I shall never forget the grief I felt at
leaving my native village for the first time in my life. I had a few days'
leisure before I went, so I resolved to ramble through every lane, and
field, and nook, for miles round — which had been dear to my boyhood's
fancy. The woods where I went nutting, the old elm by the roadside
leading to the church, which I had so often climbed for birds'-nests, and
the brook where I used to catch minnows and bullfrogs, or, more
endearing recollection of all, where I fished up little Nanny's leaky shoe.