"Shake hands, Samson." "Sure I will, sir," said the old man, grinning, as he rubbed a hard blackened hand down one leg of his trousers.

"That ain't dirt, sir.
I've been tarring some o' the sheep.

On'y a bit sticky." "I don't mind," cried the boy, holding out his hand, which was taken in a firm grip, and proved to be more than a bit sticky, for it was held tightly as the man stared hard at him.
"And the master to'd me, he did, as you was on'y a bit of a sickly slip of a lad as he left in London or elsewhere when he come out here--a poor, thin, weak, wankle sort o' gentleman, not what he is now." Nic wanted to loose his hand and get back, but it was held fast, and the old man went on: "Why, you'll grow into a _big_, strong man, sir, bigger than the doctor.
Ay, I 'gaged with him arter he'd nussed me for my broken leg, as the ship doctor down at Botany Bay said must come off.

`Nay,' says your father, and him all the time suff'rin' from a norful corf,--`nay,' he says, `don't you have it took off, my man,' he says; and I says I wouldn't, for o' course I didn't want to go about like a pegtop; and he sets to and makes it right.

This here's the leg, stronger than t'other.
I call it the doctor's leg, and I said I'd come up country with him if he'd have me, and he said he would, and I helped him make this place.
We cut the wood and knocked in the nails, and I've bred horses and sheep and cows for him, and I'm going to stick to him to the end, and then he's promised to dig a hole hisself under yan big gum tree with my name placed over me, and that's where I'm goin' to sleep.