"I understand it all right. And how my poor sides do ache with laughing. 'Lock our door as quietly as you can,' you says, 'and don't make a sound,' you says, 'for,' you says, 'if he knows we've discovered him he'll have the lives of both of us.' Sounds funnier still when it's said over again by daylight. Oh, my poor sides!"
And even then Alfred Smithers did not become rebellious; on the contrary, in a mirthless and subservient way he smiled.
"I'm quite willing to own I blundered in what seems now rather a funny way. But it wasn't in the way you think, my dear. My dear Agnes, it really wasn't."
"Tell your own story," said Mrs Smithers, with a victor's easiness.
"I was awoke sudden," said Smithers. "I don't suppose I was more than half awake, which accounts for the error of judgment. I'm a man, and not a machine. We all blunder at times. I own I made a mistake, and I can afford to laugh at it." He managed to jerk up another semblance of a smile. "At first I said that what you'd heard was a rat, and what you'd seen was a shadow. Then when you made me look through the corner of the blind, and I saw the end of the man's leg drawn inwardly through the downstairs window, I, being half asleep, supposed that it was a regular professional burglar. And if it had been that, my advice would have been correct. Professional burglars carry revolvers in their 'ip-pockets, and they'll shoot anybody—policeman or any man—to destroy evidence against them. Very well. What good was I unarmed against an armed burglar? Foolhardiness isn't courage. If you knew life as I know it you'd realise that. You didn't agree with my ideas, and, as I was half asleep, I own you were right; you said—"
Mrs Smithers took up the story triumphantly.
"I said it was stuff and nonsense, and so it was. Burglars don't come to a penny-farthing place like this; and if they did, they wouldn't wake up the house opening a window. Two drops of ile, a shove with the knife, and a wad o' paper to deaden the sound of the spring when it comes back."
Smithers recovered himself sufficiently to ask how they put in the two drops of oil and the wad of paper.
"How should I know, not being a burglar myself? Anyhow, I was right. I said it was just some tramp new to the business, and hungry for a supper, and that he'd bolt as soon as he heard anybody moving. And didn't he?"
"Yes," said Smithers, "he did. I was just thinking of getting out of bed and following you down the stairs. But he bolted as soon as he heard our door open, and was out of the house before you were half-way down. That's my point. It was an error of judgment on my part, not a want of courage. It's a mercy he'd no time to take much."