"True," said Mr. George; "that is a general rule, I know; but it might have been left open a few minutes by accident, so that the thief could get in—such things do happen very frequently; or one of the servants of the house might have got the trunk open. So that the money is not absolutely safe if you leave it in the trunk. In fact, I think that in all ordinary cases it is safer for me to carry my money in my pocket than to leave it in my trunk in my room. It is only when we are going among crowds that it is safer to leave it in our rooms; but there is no absolute and perfect safety for it any where."
"I don't see," said Rollo, "how they can possibly
get the money out so from a deep pocket without our knowing it."
"It is very strange," said Mr. George; "but I believe the London pickpockets are the most skilful in the world. Sometimes they go in gangs, and they contrive to make a special pressure in the crowd, in a narrow passage, or at a corner, and then some of them jam against the gentleman they are going to rob, pretending that they are jammed by others behind them, and thus push and squeeze him so hard on every side that he does not feel any little touch about his pocket; or, by the time he does feel and notice it, the purse is gone."
"Yes," said Rollo, "that is exactly the way it was with me.
"But there is one thing I could have done," said Rollo. "If I had put my purse in my inside jacket pocket, and buttoned up the jacket tight, then they could not possibly have got it."
"Yes," said Mr. George, "they have a way of cutting through the cloth with the little sharp point of the knife which they have in a ring on one of their fingers. With this they can cut through the cloth any where if they feel a purse underneath, and take it out without your knowing any thing about it till you get home."
"I declare!" said Rollo. "Then I don't see what I could do."
"No," replied Mr. George, "there is nothing that we can do to guard absolutely against the possibility of losing our property when we are travelling—or in any other case, in fact. There is a certain degree of risk that we must incur, and various losses in one way or another will come. All we have to do is to exercise the right degree of precaution, neither too much nor too little, and then submit good naturedly to whatever comes."