“You see, Mrs. Gordon, we had a sum of five hundred dollars paid in unexpectedly this morning, and we can’t get it to the bank till Monday. Now, it makes my sister nervous to think of having such a sum of money in the house. I was reading in the papers of a burglar entering a house at night in Thebes—the next village—and it might happen to us. I don’t know what we should do, as we have no man in the house.”
“Andy isn’t a man,” said Mrs. Gordon, smiling.
“No, he isn’t a man, but he is a good stout boy, and we should feel safer if he were in the house.”
“What an uncommonly sensible old lady Miss Peabody is!” thought Andy.
He felt proud of his presence being supposed to be a safeguard against housebreakers.
“I’ll go, Miss Peabody,” he said, promptly.
“But, Andy,” said his mother, “you could do no good.”
“I don’t know about that, mother,” said Andy.
“You would be no match for a bold, bad man, and I don’t like to think of your being in danger.”
“Oh, you’re a woman, mother, and don’t understand!” answered Andy, good-humoredly. “I can scare a burglar away if he tries to get in.”