“‘I’ve come a bit too late,’ he answers; ‘that’s the mistake I’ve made. Two hundred years ago there were lots of things a fellow might have done.’
“‘Yes, I know what’s in your mind,’ I says: ‘pirates.’
“‘Yes, pirates would be all right,’ says he; ‘they got plenty of sea-air and exercise, and didn’t need to join a blooming funeral club.’
“‘You’ve got ideas above your station,’ I says. ‘You work hard, and one day you’ll have a milk-shop of your own, and be walking out with a pretty housemaid on your arm, feeling as if you were the Prince of Wales himself.’
“‘Stow it!’ he says; ‘it makes me
shiver for fear it might come true. I’m not cut out for a respectable cove, and I won’t be one neither, if I can help it!’
“‘What do you mean to be, then?’ I says; ‘we’ve all got to be something, until we’re stiff ’uns.’
“‘Well,’ he says, quite cool-like, ‘I think I shall be a burglar.’
“I dropped into the seat opposite and stared at him. If any other lad had said it I should have known it was only foolishness, but he was just the sort to mean it.
“‘It’s the only calling I can think of,’ says he, ‘that has got any element of excitement left in it.’