Then Mitchell's mate told a yarn.

"I knew a case once something like the one you were telling me about;
the landlady of a hash-house where I was stopping in Albany told me.
There was a young carpenter staying there, who'd run away from Sydney
from an old maid who wanted to marry him. He'd cleared from the
church door, I believe. He was scarcely more'n a boy--about
nineteen--and a soft kind of a fellow, something like you, only
good-looking--that is, he was passable. Well, as soon as the woman
found out where he'd gone, she came after him. She turned up at the
boarding-house one Saturday morning when Bobbie was at work; and the
first thing she did was to rent a double room from the landlady and
buy some cups and saucers to start housekeeping with. When Bobbie
came home he just gave her one look and gave up the game.

"'Get your dinner, Bobbie,' she said, after she'd slobbered over him
a bit, 'and then get dressed and come with me and get married!'

"She was about three times his age, and had a face like that picture
of a lady over Sappho Smith's letters in the Sydney _Bulletin_.

"Well, Bobbie went with her like a--like a lamb; never gave a kick or
tried to clear."

"Hold on," said Mitchell, "did you ever shear lambs?"

"Never mind. Let me finish the yarn. Bobbie was married; but she
wouldn't let him out of her sight all that afternoon, and he had to
put up with her before them all. About bedtime he sneaked out and
started along the passage to his room that he shared with two or three