"I did not argue with my father, for he was a man who hated to be differed with, and I agreed to help him carry out his little joke. We took off our shoes and walked quietly to the back of the house. My father stood below, and I climbed up the trellis under the back window, which he pointed out. The window-sash was down all but a little crack to let in air, and I raised it so slowly and gently that I made no noise. Then without any trouble at all I got into the room.
"I found myself in a moderate-sized chamber, into which a faint light came from a door opposite the window. Having been several hours out in the night my eyes had become so accustomed to darkness that this light was comparatively strong and I could see everything.
"Looking about me my eyes fell on a little bedstead, on which lay one of the most beautiful infants I ever beheld in my life. Its golden hair lay in ringlets upon the pillow. Its eyes were closed, but its soft cheeks had in them a rosy tinge which almost equalled the colour of its dainty little lips, slightly opened as it softly breathed and dreamed." At this point I saw my wife look quickly at the bedroom key she had in her hand. I knew she was thinking of George William.
"I stood entranced," continued the burglar, "gazing upon this babe, for I was very fond of children; but I remembered that I must not waste time, and stepped softly into the next room. There I beheld Mr. and Mrs. Williamson Green in bed, both fast asleep, the gentleman breathing a little hard. In a corner, just where my father told me I should find it, stood the box upon the table.
"But I could not immediately pick it up and depart. The beautiful room in which I found myself was a revelation to me. Until that moment I had not known that I had tastes and sympathies of a higher order than might have been expected of the youthful son of a boat-builder. Those artistic furnishings aroused within a love of the beautiful which I did not know I possessed. The carpets, the walls, the pictures, the hangings in the windows, the furniture, the ornaments,—everything, in fact, impressed me with such a delight that I did not wish to move or go away.
"Into my young soul there came a longing. 'Oh!' I said to myself, 'that my parents had belonged to the same social grade as that worthy couple reposing in that bed; and oh! that I, in my infancy, had been as beautiful and as likely to be so carefully nurtured and cultured as that sweet babe in the next room.' I almost heaved a sigh as I thought of the difference between these surroundings and my own, but I checked myself; it would not do to made a noise and spoil my father's joke.
"There were a great many things in that luxurious apartment which it would have delighted me to look upon and examine, but I forbore."
"I wish I'd been there," said the stout man; "there wouldn't have been any forbearin'."
The speaker turned sharply upon him.
"Don't you interrupt me again," he said angrily. Then, instantly resuming his deferential tone, he continued the story.