We all begged hard that he mightn’t be sent to prison, because of the evil company and the stain for life, so the magistrate sent him to a reformatory; and I suppose he is there now.
After that, our nursemaid felt relieved in her mind, poor girl, and so did I. It was not a nice idea to think that Dashing Dick, the boy highwayman, was waiting about for her with a pistol, every time she took baby out for a walk.
That was our first boy, and we didn’t have another. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, especially boys that can read, and get bitten with the romantic idea. It was all very well when they only ran away to sea; but now that they want to be burglars and pirates and highwaymen, it’s awful. You never know what dreadful things they’ll be up to. I knew a boy once that stole a hundred pounds, and bought six revolvers with the money, and stuck them all in his belt, loaded, and rode about the country on a horse, stopping old ladies coming home from market, and making them stand and deliver their purses, and all they had in their baskets, and was only caught through robbing an old lady who had a bottle of gin in her basket, which he drank, and got so drunk that he fell off his horse, and was found lying in the road, with his head cut open, and taken to the station.
I’m sure the trash that’s sold to boys and girls has a lot to answer for, for they read it at a time when their minds are influenced by it, and they haven’t the sense to see the wickedness of it and what it leads to. Lots of girls in service are ruined through the vile stuff they read making them discontented, and wanting to be I don’t know what.
It was after this awful boy of ours had turned out so badly that we determined to have a man, and it was then that Tom Dexter came to us. He is the odd man I was going to speak about, when I left off to tell you the story of Dashing Dick, who wanted our nursemaid to elope with him, and who put his love-letters in her boots when he cleaned them. Tom Dexter was——
* * * * *
Oh, Harry, dear, do you really think it? Money going out of the till! Whoever can it be?
CHAPTER XI.
OUR ODD MAN.
I told you our odd man, Tom Dexter, came to us after that awful young scamp of a boy, who was going to be a highwayman, left.
Mr. Wilkins wanted to recommend a man he knew, who had been ostler up in London, but Harry said, “No, thank you, Wilkins, I’ll look out for one myself.” It was Mr. Wilkins who recommended us the boy highwayman, so we hadn’t much faith in his recommendations after that; though, of course, he meant well, and only wanted to do the boy’s grandmother a good turn.