“Or, rather, wouldn’t care about seeing on a dark night in a lonely road—eh?”
“That’s more like it, master. Well, the other was a poor weazened bit of a chap as ever you’d set eyes on in a day’s travel. The pair on ’em were goin’ about like bagmen with japanned tea-trays; but instead of going to the towns and doing business only with the shops, they went round the country and called at the houses themselves, and among others they went to farmer Nettlethorpe’s, not to sell trays (for everybody, yourself among the rest know that Master Nettlethorpe aint the man to spill money over such like things), but to take the measure of his kitchen window with a piece of tape.”
“Goodness me, is it possible?” exclaimed Patty, in a tone of alarm.
“It be the solemn truth, mum, as sure as I be a speaking to you this very minnit. They not only measures the window wi’ tape, but they take the shape of his lock wi’ a bit of bread paste.”
“Never!”
“Oh, we knows this, because the sarvint caught one man at the window afore he’d quite done, and found a bit of bread crumb in the lock that same evening, but she being a poor silly morsel of a field wench, didn’t think no harm ’ud come of it.”
“She must have been a born idiot. That’s what she must be,” cried Ashbrook. “Well, what followed?”
“Harm did come, as we all on us know, for last night the house was broken into by the kitchen window and the passage door; the master and missus were gagged and bound wi’ cord a by two men wi’ crape on their faces, and wi’ pistols in their hands, and every farden in the house was robbed right away.
“Oh! but I be very sorry for poor Mr. Nettlethorpe and his sister. They say as how she was senseless for hours, and the doctor had a hard job to bring her to at all.”
“I am sorry for both of them, but I tell ’ee that there’s summat more to be said in the business. It was only yesterday as farmer Cheadle met me out riding, and he told me about a couple of impudent fellows as had driven up to his house, and one on ’em had got out and come into the kitchen, and asked his housekeeper, Dorcas, if she wanted any tea-trays, and she said ‘No.’”