“What a good thing!”
“Yes, only I don’t believe he did it! It was that nasty little Bill Nosey. I am sure that he got hold of the lady’s parcel, and stuffed it into Silky’s cap.”
Emilia spoke with a vehemence that made them both laugh, and Gerald said—
“But if he is in a reformatory, what then? Are we to condole with his afflicted family, or bring Bill Nosey to confess?”
“I thought I would see about it,” said Emilia vaguely.
“Well, I decline to walk in the steps of the police as an amateur! How about the Dicksons?”
“Drifted away no one knows where. That’s the worst of it. Those poor things do shift about so.”
“Yes. I thought we had got hold of those boys with the gymnasium. But work wants regulating.”
“Oh, Gerald, I am glad you are coming. Now I am free! Just fancy, they had a horrid, stupid, slow dinner-party on Easter Monday, of all the burgomasters and great One-eyers, and would not let me go down and sing to the match-girls!”
“You had the pleasure of a study of the follies of wealth instead of the follies of poverty.”