Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/55

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PAUL CLIFFORD.
25

'With a smile in her cheek, but a tear in her eye.')

"Paul, thy heart be good!—thy heart be good!—Thou didst not spill a drop of the tape! Tell me, my honey, why didst thou lick Tom Tobyson?"

"Because," answered Paul, "he said as how you ought to have been hanged long ago!"

"Tom Tobyson is a-good-for-nought," returned the dame, "and deserves to shove the tumbler;[1] but, oh my child! be not too venturesome in taking up the sticks for a blowen. It has been the ruin of many a man afore you, and when two men goes to quarrel for a 'oman, they doesn't know the natur of the thing they quarrels about;—mind thy latter end, Paul, and reverence the old, without axing what they has been before they passed into the wale of years;—thou may'st get me my pipe, Paul,—it is upstairs, under the pillow."

While Paul was accomplishing this errand,

  1. Be whipped at the cart's tail.