“Well, sir;” said the master, “what do you know about the tree?”
“If you plaze, sir,” growled Giles, “if you plaze, sir, I sawed un.”
“Oh! you 'sawed un,' did you?”
“Iss, I did:—Dick seed I saw un.”
“Is this true, master Richard?”
“Iss,” said Dick; and Giles, much to his astonishment, was immediately flogged.
At the termination of the ceremony, it occurred to the master to ask Giles, how he had obtained the saw. “About your saw, young gentleman;” said he, “where do you get a saw when you want one?”
Giles had some faint notions of grammar floating in his brain, and thinking that the master meant the verb, and not the substantive, blubbered out—“From see.”
“Sea!—so you go on board the vessels in the dock, do you, out of school hours, and expend your pocket money, in purchasing implements to cut down my shrubbery?”
“Noa, sir,” said Giles; “I doant goa aboard no ships, nor cut down noa shrubberies.”