“Well, I’m going to take the beef to the Police Office, where Bill is,” said I; “I will leave you the mustard.”
“If you are going to be a thaif, take it altogether,” she cried, “and may the devil blister your throat before you try to ate what belongs to a poor widdow! And you’ve ta’en up the boy agin, have yez?”
“Yes.”
“For stailing his own mate?”
“And if you are not quiet,” said I, “I will return and take up you for helping him to eat it.”
“And that would just make the right ind ov it, you murtherin’ spoiler ov widdows and orphans.”
And now that she had begun to abuse me I might get more of her “good words” than I wanted, so I left her, hearing, as I went down stairs, as many of the widow’s malisons as would have served, if they had been blessings, for the contents of all the rifled larders.
I had nearly got to the Office when a cook from Inverleith Terrace came and reported the theft of a leg of mutton. I was now pretty certain I had not overstepped my duty in apprehending Bill, but the difficulty remained as to the identification.
“Would you know your leg if you saw it?” inquired I.
“As easily as I would know my own, if it were cut off,” she replied, with a grim smile.