“I’ll be polite to him,” Editha had said, as she was coming down-stairs. “I am sure he’ll be more obliging if I am very polite. Miss Lane says politeness always wins its way.”
So the first words she spoke were as polite as she could make them.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said, in a soft voice. “I don’t want to hurt you; I came to ask a favor of you.”
The burglar was so amazed that he actually forgot he was a burglar, and staggered back against the wall. I think he thought at first that Editha was a little ghost. “You see I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to,” she went on, wishing to encourage him. “I’m too little. I’m only seven,—and a little over,—and I’m not going to scream, because that would waken mamma, and that’s just what I don’t want to do.”
That did encourage the burglar, but still he was so astonished that he did not know what to do.
“Well, I’m blowed,” he said in a whisper, “if this ain’t a rummy go!” which was extremely vulgar language; but, unfortunately, he was one of those burglars who, as Miss Lane said, “had not had any advantages,” which is indeed the case with the majority of the burglars of my acquaintance.
Then he began to laugh,—in a whisper also, if one can be said to laugh in a whisper. He put his hand over his mouth, and made no noise, but he laughed so hard that he doubled up and rocked himself to and fro.
“The rummiest go!” he said, in his uneducated way. “An’ she haint agoin’ to ’urt me. Oh, my heye!”
He was evidently very badly educated, indeed, for he not only used singular words, but sounded his h’s all in the wrong places. Editha noticed this, even in the midst of her surprise at his laughter. She could not understand what he was laughing at. Then it occurred to her that she might have made a mistake.
“If you please,” she said with great delicacy, “are you really a burglar?”