“The other unfor—the other rascal—the burglar.”
“Why he never said there were two.”
“Y—yes!—he said they found their shoes.”
“No, he said he found a pair of shoes.”
“For all that you are wrong, Jenny, and he is right—there were two; and, what is more, Tom Yates had got the other, threatening to blow out his brains if he moved, so down he sat on the dresser and took it quite easy and whistled a tune while we trussed the other beggar with his own bludgeon and our chokers. Tom Yates says the cool one tumbled down from upstairs just as we drove our one in. Tom let them try the door before he bounced out; then my one flung a chair at Tom's head and cut back, Tom nailed the other and I floored mine. Hurrah!”
Through this whole narrative Robinson had coolly and delicately to curl live hair with a beating heart, and to curl the very man who was relating all the time how he had hunted him and caught his comrades. Meantime a shrewd woman there listening with all her ears, a woman, too, who had certain vague suspicions about him, and had taken him up rather sharper than natural, he thought, when, being off his guard for a moment he anticipated the narrator, and assumed there were two burglars in the house.
Tom, therefore, though curious and anxious, shut his face and got on his guard, and it was with an admirable imitation of mere sociable curiosity that he inquired, “And what did the rascals say for themselves?”
“What could they say?” said Jenny, “they were caught in the fact.”
“To do them justice they did not speak of themselves, but they said three or four words too—very much to the point.”
“How interesting it is!” cried Jenny—“what about?”