"Bagging things? Do you mean stealing?" George said, greatly shocked.
"Well, not regular prigging," the Shadow replied; "not wipes, yer know, nor tickers, nor them kind of things. I aint never prigged nothing of that kind."
"Well, what is it then you do—prig?" George asked, mystified.
"Apples or cabbages, or a bunch of radishes, onions sometimes, or 'taters. That aint regular prigging, you know."
"Well, it seems to me the same sort of thing," George said, after a pause.
"I tell yer it aint the same sort of thing at all," the Shadow said angrily. "Everyone as aint a fool knows that taters aint wipes, and no one can't say as a apple and a ticker are the same."
"No, not the same," George agreed; "but you see one is just as much stealing as the other."
"No, it aint," the boy reasserted. "One is the same as money and t'other aint. I am hungry and I nips a apple off a stall. No one aint the worse for it. You don't suppose as they misses a apple here? Why, there's wagon-loads of 'em, and lots of 'em is rotten. Well, it aint no more if I takes one than if it was rotten. Is it now?"
George thought there was a difference, but he did not feel equal to explaining it.
"The policemen must think differently," he said at last, "else they wouldn't be always trying to catch you."