And if you please Miss Clara dear, we would not stoop to ask Beany Dawe
and he nothing but a sawing poet; so father go to the old oak chest with
the whitewash on it, and pull it open without the key, and take out some
old rubbish he saith, and order mother to pack it without a word, and
mother want to put in a pair of linen sheets and the best table-cloth,
but father say quite crusty like, "Do e take our Miss Clara for a common
packman?" And when I say, "Please father what shall I say about it
all?" he answer me quite low, "How ever can I tell child? Ask your
mother there. Only give my best respects and most humble duty, and tell
Miss Clara I wishes I could find a man to throw me all four pins, for
being such a drunken hosebird not to have more to send her. But I know
her won’t take money from the likes of us. Stop," father say, "ask her
to please to lift our horn up as the horn of an unicorn. I knows where
to go for lots of money and all to be had for asking. I’ll go to Bodmin
town next week," say father, "and show them Cornishers a trick of
Abraham Cann. Since honest Abraham took the sprain, he left it all to
me, though God knows, and thank him for the same, I never want it yet.
I should like to see the Cornisher as could stand my grip." And then
father pull both his hands out of his pockets. Mother say he wear them
out he do spraddle both his thumbs so.
It seems a curious thing, Miss Clara dear, father never get vexed or
weist like, but what he want to wrestle, and other times he never think
of it, unless it be to fair or revel time.
When I asked mother and said as father tell me to, the tears was in her
eyes, and she try to look angry with me, and then she broke out crying
as loud as Suke when the cow Molly kick her. So between the both of
them, Miss, I can’t know what to say, so please to make it yourself
Miss, for I am sure I can’t find any thing only the best love of our
hearts and a side of bacon us would like to send, and the butter from my
own little cow, all sweet hay and no turmots; I be to sit in Coom
market, all by myself, on Saturday, and mother not come nigh me, and I
know you’ll let me send you the money, and I expects elevenpence a
pound, because you never was proud with your loving scholar ever to
command and obey. SALLY HUXTABLE.
All this here underneath and over the leaf is going to be written after
the rest of this here paper.
If you please Miss Clara dear, there come now just a very fine spoken
gentleman with a long coat the colour of udder, and blue flaps, and blue
at the hands, and ever so many great silver buttons with a print like
pats of best butter, and gold ribbon round his hat. We seemed at first
he be an officer of dragoons, till we see’d the flour in his hair, and
then us knowed he was the Queen’s miller. Father was a great mind to
show him a forehip and send his buttons to you Miss, because he see they
be worth ever so much more than these little things all put together,
only mother stop him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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