Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/68

 suprised at their brother Jack's choice; and then I'd gammon at home that it was all true.

'At last the place got too hot for me. I got sick of dodging that girl. I sent a mate of mine to tell her that it was all a joke, and that I was already married in secret; but she didn't see it, then I cleared, and got a job in Newcastle, but had to leave there when my mate sent me the office that she was coming. I wouldn't wonder but what she is humping her swag after me now on the track. In fact, I thought you was her in disguise when I set eyes on you first.…You needn't get mad about it; I don't mean to say that you're quite as ugly as she was, because I never saw a man that was―or a woman either. Anyway, I'll never ask a woman to marry me again unless I'm ready to marry her.'

Then Mitchell's mate told a yarn.

'I knew a case once something like the one you were telling me about; the landlady of a hash-house where I was stopping in Albany told me. There was a young carpenter staying there, who'd run away from Sydney from an old maid who wanted to marry him. He'd cleared from the church door, I believe. He was scarcely more'n a boy―about nineteen―and a soft kind of a fellow, something like you, only good-looking―that is, he was passable. Well, as soon as the woman found out where he'd gone, she came after him. She turned up at the boarding-house one Saturday morning when Bobbie was at work; and the first thing she did was to rent a double room from the landlady and buy some cups and saucers to start housekeeping with. When Bobbie came home he just gave her one look and gave up the game