Bill Simpson's Daughter.

Otago Witness, Issue 2685, 30 August 1905, Page 80

Bill Simpson's Daughter.

A gentleman travelling from Albany to New York tells the following story. Two ladies dressed -n the extreme of fashion entered the car. Their manners indicated great affoetatioji and consequent sliallowness. As tho fashionable ladies took their seats and acljustdd their draperies, ono of them said to the other: "Don't you think it is too bad that there is such poor accommodation on railway trains now?" "How? In what way?" asked her companion. "Why, here we are crowded up with all clashes of people.' 1 ''Yes; isn't it horrid." "Perfectly dreadful!" '"How annoying to> come In contact with, such people!" "I suppose it's horrid for me to say so, but I havo aM my life had such a repugnance to common labouring people, such as are here.'' At that moment an elderly iran, in the }'< me-spun and home-made garments of a farmer, eam>2 down the aisle. He stopped before the ladies of fashion, closely scrutinised tho features of the one with the "repugnance. ' and jiifct as the train stopped at the station cried out, loud enough to be heard by every person in tho car: "Weel, weel. yor am old Bill Slimpson's darter; weel, I never! Yer mind ho,v I youst to give yer two bits a day an' yer dinner for helpin' my nipper to dig taters about 12 or 15 years ago? Ho, ho. ho!" The young lady, with a blushing face, started biting her fan and 1 looked down nervously, but the old farmer went on beadlessly: ''Bill Simpsrm ain't the man to forget old frons, so jus tell him yo' saw ol& Bill-ing-5, who gi'e him a lift iip when he was so poor. I was 1 wery glad 1 to hear yer pap got rich, for ho was a mighty hard worker. My wife alrus says she ain't found a decent washerwoman since yer ma moved. I gil oit here. Good-bye, Mis.9 Sally." The meekest and most subdued person on that train during the rest of the trip was "Bill Simpson's darter." j