‘You needn’t do that,’ says Susan. ‘Poor creature! you need not be afraid of me; I will not give you up to justice!’
‘Thank you kindly, miss,’ comes from the wretched creature behind the cap. He is evidently struggling with emotion.
‘I don’t want you to thank me,’ says Susan, who is feeling inclined to cry. She has often read of thieves, but never met one until now, and it seems to her, all at once, that they are decidedly interesting, so ready to hear—to receive admonition, too. ‘I want you to promise me that for the future you will abstain from—from thieving of any sort.’
‘I’ll promise you, miss—I will indeed. I’d promise you anything.’ Poor thing! he seems quite overcome. ‘But, miss, I wasn’t really stealing just now.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ says Susan; a revulsion of feeling makes her once again hard to him. Confession is good for the soul, but denial—and such a useless denial, too, caught in the act as he is—savours of folly, that worst of all things, for which there is no forgiveness.
‘Do you think I did not see you? Why, look at that basket; it is nearly full. How can you say you were not stealing those cherries? Better to show some regret than to carry off your crime in such a barefaced way.’
It is hardly barefaced, the unhappy culprit’s face being now quite hidden by his cap.
‘Just think,’ says Susan, her clear, sweet voice trembling with grief because of this sinner; ‘if you had a garden, would you like people to come into it and steal your fruit?’
The poor thief is evidently beginning to feel the situation acutely. He has taken out his handkerchief in a surreptitious fashion, and is rubbing his eyes with it.
‘I shouldn’t mind if it was you, miss,’ says he, in a stifled tone.