Well, for about a day I guess Bony thought he was about the smartest kid that ever lived. Anyhow, he acted that way and the reason was that his house had been burglared and mine and Swatty's houses hadn't been. But that wasn't our fault.
Swatty didn't say much because he thought maybe the burglar would come around and burglar his house and then he would be as good as Bony. But the burglar didn't go to any more houses, and me and Swatty got pretty sick and tired of hearing Bony bragging about the burglar climbing right in at his window and almost falling over his bed, and about how—if he had wakened up—he would have gone into his father's room and got his father's shotgun and shot the burglar.
We got pretty sick of hearing about the reward Bony's father had offered, and about how the policemen came to the house and looked at Bony's bedroom window and everything and wrote it all down.
“Garsh!” Swatty said; “it ain't nothing to brag about to be burglared! The way you talk you'd think nobody in the world could be burglared but you. If I wanted to I could write to my uncle in Derlingport and he'd send down a burglar to burglar my house in a minute. And he'd burglar Georgie's house, too. And my uncle would send down a real burglar, too.”
That was a good one on Bony, because the newspaper said the policemen said the burglar that bur-glared Bony's house wasn't a real burglar but only “local talent.”
“Well—well—” Bony said, “well, if your uncle can send down so many real burglars, why don't he do it, and not leave you sitting there talking about what he can do all the time?”
“Aw! if you say much more about your old burglar I will write to my uncle to send some down,” Swatty said.
“Aw! and if you did he wouldn't get nothing! What'd he get at your house? I bet he wouldn't get any cardinal's signet ring.”
Well, I guess that made Swatty pretty mad. I guess we had heard about all we wanted to hear about that old signet ring, so Swatty started to go away, and he said to me:
“Come on! he thinks there ain't nothing in the world but that old signet ring. I bet it was brass, anyway.”