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'Very sorry, says he, my good woman, 'but your husband should have thought of that before. It's against my principles, says he, 'to have any unionists about the place. I'm told he's been making the other men discontented. I can't take him back. You must blame him, not me, says he. "I could feel the temper in me, just as though he'd given me a couple of stiff nobblers of real old whisky.
The elixir gurgled and glittered before his fascinated eyes until the pannikin held enough for two stiff nobblers, without evoking any polite verbal restraint. "My word!" said the Boss, at last, "that boy can't say when." Mickie and Jinny being privileged became familiar, and spoke all sorts of confidences in the ears of their mistress.
Lopez asked what they wanted; the reply was that they wished for admission to have a drink. After some demur, Lopez at last opened the door, and the men entered. Nobblers were ordered, and while Lopez was reaching for a bottle, one of the thieves, named Brooke, made a grab at the money lying in the open drawer.
There is a current story which I know to be true of two well-known colonials, who, on landing from the P. and 0. steamer at Southampton, immediately entered the first public-house, and asked for 'two nobblers of English ale. Having drunk the ale, which was highly approved of, one of them put down a shilling, and was walking off, when the barmaid recalled him, and offered eightpence change.
A bull would not be more out of place in a china-shop, though probably less amusing and more destructive. The poor fellow meets so many friends in town, that by the end of the day he has probably had more nobblers than are altogether good for him. It is a very hard life that he leads, and he takes his pleasure, like his work, hardly.
The state of accommodation here may be gathered from the success of some of the party who had a PENCHANT for "nobblers" of brandy. "Nothing but bottled beer in the house." "What could we have for dinner?" inquired one, rather amused at this Hobson's choice state of affairs. "The eatables was only cold meat; and they couldn't cook nothink fresh," was the curt reply. "Can we sleep here?"
Just to stimulate the spirit of good fellowship, one man had dexterously annexed a couple of bottles of Pain-killer from a hawker's waggon he stumbled across, and those who were in his vicinity toasted one another and the general run of the diggings in nobblers of it; but it was not a success, and the festive season was even less exhilarating to the revellers than it was to those who had not participated in the "find."
'By G ! was their simultaneous exclamation, 'this is a land to live in, where you can get two nobblers of English ale for fourpence! let us drink our shilling's-worth. Like their American cousins, the Australians are of opinion that there is no liquid worthy to be mentioned by the side of 'champagne. It requires some education to acquire a taste for claret.
"Oh, Master Gilpins, there's a chap been and run off wi' all my traps, and I've not a rag left, but just what I stand in!" Sam was, of course, glad enough to assist in carrying their luggage. James apologised to the stranger, saying he would not trouble him. "Not so fast, young chum!" exclaimed the man. "You promised me a couple of nobblers, and engaged me to call a porter.
All day long the hotel bars are besieged by crowds of men demanding "nobblers," like flies round a pot of honey, and I have heard that a hotel proprietor does not care to see his customers go beyond the bar, as so large a proportion of his profit is derived from it. In a debate in the Assembly, on the new Licensing Bill, one orator referred contemptuously to "miserable tea drinkers."
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