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Gabbitas called 'Awful warnings, were for me more real, more impressive, than they are to youths who live in comfortably luxurious homes, and know the care of mother and sisters. The normal youth is naturally not often moved to the vein of 'There, but for the grace of God, goes etc. But I was, inevitably.
Perkins had kindly supplied quite a stock of shirts for me, by means of operations performed upon old shirts of her husband's. My Sunday suit of clothes had occupied me greatly for some weeks. I had never before bought clothing of any kind. After two or three visits to the store, and many talks at mealtimes with Mrs. Gabbitas, I finally decided upon blue serge.
With news in hand I have no doubt Mrs. Gabbitas took an early opportunity of a chat with Mrs. Perkins. At all events I had no sooner got my lawn-mower to work that morning than the mistress called me to her where she lay on the verandah. 'Is it true we're going to lose you, Nick? she said very kindly. And, as my irritating way still was, I blushed confusedly as I endorsed the report.
Our candles seemed to me abominably short, and I once tried to seduce Mrs. Gabbitas into allowing me two at a time; but she, good soul, wisely said that one was more than I had any right to burn in an evening, and I was too miserly to buy them for myself. Yes, it seems horribly unnatural in a youth, but I am afraid I was rather miserly at that time. I wanted passionately to do various things.
Gabbitas, of all the really DESERVING cases," old Mrs. Verrall was saying. It is curious, but it did not occur to me that here was a mother whose son I was going to kill. I did not see her in that aspect at all.
And on the whole from the impartial perspective of my three and seventy years I adjudicate that if my dialectic was bad, that of the Rev. Gabbitas was altogether worse. Little pink spots came into his cheeks, a squealing note into his voice. We interrupted each other more and more rudely.
Next morning at breakfast I told Mrs. Gabbitas I meant to leave and make for Sydney; and Mrs. Gabbitas gave me to understand that, with all their infinite varieties of foolishness, most young fellows shared one idiosyncrasy in common: they none of them had sense enough to know when they were well off. I spoke of my shorthand, and said I had not been working at it for nothing. Mrs.
It came on the heels of my question in the form of a clatter of horses without, and the gride and cessation of wheels. I glimpsed a straw-hatted coachman and a pair of grays. It seemed an incredibly magnificent carriage for Clayton. "Eh!" said the Rev. Gabbitas, going to the window. "Why, it's old Mrs. Verrall! It's old Mrs. Verrall. Really! What CAN she want with me?"
It takes time, he says, 'but I flatter myself that any men who have worked under me are at least grounded in the rudiments of their profession. Adrian, he says, 'was there anything wrong with the men who upset Van Bester's applecart last month when he was trying to cross the line to join Piper with those horses he'd stole from Gabbitas? "'No, Generaal, says Van Zyl.
Gabbitas, the curate of all work, lodged on our ground floor, and upstairs there was an old lady, Miss Holroyd, who painted flowers on china and maintained her blind sister in an adjacent room; my mother and I lived in the basement and slept in the attics.
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