She felt it only respectable to say that, even if he had fallen into bad habits and become a burglar.
He shook hands with her in quite a friendly manner, and even made a bow.
“Yer welcome, my dear,” he said. “An’ I must hadd that if I ever see a queerer or better behaved little kid, may I be blowed—or, as yer told me it would be more correcter to say, I’ll be blown.”
He threw his head very far back, which was vulgar.
Editha did not know he was joking; she thought he was improving, and that if he had had advantages he might have been a very nice man.
It was astonishing how neatly he slipped through the window; he was gone in a second, and Editha found herself standing alone in the dark, as he had taken his lantern with him.
She groped her way out and up the stairs, and then, for the first time, she began to feel cold and rather weak and strange; it was more like being frightened than any feeling she had had while the burglar was in the house.
“Perhaps, if he had been a very bad burglar, he might have killed me,” she said to herself, trembling a little. “I am very glad he did not kill me, for—for it would have hurt mamma so, and papa too, when he came back, and they told him.”
Her mamma wakened in the morning with a bright smile.