"You don't know," said Jane. "But I'll tell you something: There ain't no bars on the windows where poor little girls live. For the simple reason that nobody wants to steal them."
Gwendolyn considered the statement, her fingers still busy knotting and unknotting.
"I tell you," Jane launched forth again, "that if you run about on the street, like poor children do, you'll be grabbed up by a band of kidnapers."
"Are—are kidnapers worse than doctors?" asked Gwendolyn.
"Worse than doctors!" scoffed Thomas, "Heaps worse."
"Worse than—than bears?" (The last trace of that rebellious red was gone.)
Up and down went Jane's head solemnly. "Kidnapers carry knives—big curved knives."
Now Gwendolyn recalled a certain terror-inspiring man with a long belted coat and a cap with a shiny visor. It was not his height that made her fear him, for her father was fully as tall; and it was not his brass-buttoned coat, or the dark, piercing eyes under the visor. She feared him because Jane had often threatened her with his coming; and, secondly, because he wore, hanging from his belt, a cudgel—long and heavy and thick. How that cudgel glistened in the sunlight as it swung to and fro by a thong!
"Worse than a—a p'liceman?" she faltered.
"Policeman? Yes!"