“I’m glad to hear that you’ve come to your senses,” I dryly remarked. “What has given you the notion?”
“I don’t know, but the spunk’s all gone out of me,” he dejectedly answered. “I haven’t my wife now.”
“Oh, indeed! what has become of her?” I asked with fresh interest.
“Gone,” he said, with a sorrowful shake of the head and a quiver of the lip.
“Gone where?”
“Gone dead, I’m afraid,” he huskily answered. “If she’d been alive she would have met me whenever I got out. She worshipped the very ground I trod on. I hear she went on the stage as a ballet-girl after I was laid up, and that and the loss of me killed her, I suppose. We had a bit of a tiff before I was took. I was so hanged jealous of her—but that was nothing. The like of her doesn’t walk the earth. True as steel, and she loved me so!”
I said nothing; for if I had spoken I should have had to say that if the loss of Pretty Polly made him adopt an honest life, her absence would be a blessing.
I chatted away for a little, and then said abruptly—
“What was your object in telling me you were going on the square?” I thought perhaps that he might want assistance.
“What was your object in speaking to me?” he roughly and snappishly returned. “I had no object at all. I know that the more thieves there are the better it is for you.”