“Don’t.”
I had almost reached the threshold when her words made me turn.
“Do you know who I am?”
“I think I do,” was all I could reply.
“Well, then, why shouldn’t you come back later—in some more usual manner—and let me see if there isn’t something I could do for you?”
“Do for me in what way?”
“In the way of getting you work—or something.”
My heart had leaped up for a minute, but now it fell. Why it should have done either I cannot say, since I could be nothing to her but a fool who had tried to be a thief, and couldn’t, as we say in our common idiom, get away with it.
I thanked her again.