There was with us a boatman whom we had employed for a sail on the bay. As we passed, he looked back with a pleased expression.
“Nancy, there, on the ladther, is my gurl.”
THE BOATMAN AND NANCY.
We congratulated him on his good fortune, for Nancy was a bright, handsome, buxom, cheery girl, who was just the kind that such a man should marry.
“You are to marry her?”
“Yes, some time.”
“Why not now?”
“Marry her now! What on? She has her grandmudther to care for, I have my fadther and mudther, and there is but little boating to do, and the rint is to pay jist the same. I have lived in Ameriky, and want to get back, but I won’t go widout Nancy, and God knows whin I shall git enough to go wid her.”
“Why don’t you marry her and take the chances.”
“Niver! I’ll niver marry a gurl and bring childher into the world to go through what we have had to. I’ve seen enough of it. My fadther has been upon the place all his life and his fadther afore him. They made the land they wuz born upon, and the rint has bin raised rigularly, lavin us jist what we could git to eat, and now at sixty-five and bad wid the rheumatiz, so that he can’t work half the time, he has nothing. I went away to sea, and got to Ameriky, but I had to kim back to take care of him and my mudther, and it’s all I kin do to keep ’em from bein’ evicted. An Amerikin gev me the boat, which he had built for the season, and if it wuzn’t for wat I make out of it we would all be in the workhouse. I’ll never marry Nancy till I kin find some way to git to Ameriky, and some way there to make a dacint livin'. I will niver marry and settle here, to see Nancy and her childher kim up as I kim up, and me livin’ as my fadther and mudther is livin'.”