"John! I do wish you were not so slangy!"
"Has seen Brown holding sweet converse with a comrade tried and true, of specially obnoxious character. Look here, Lucy!" Mr. Aymer blew a smoke ring and looked inquiringly at his wife, knitting briskly in her corner by the rose-shaded lamp. "How does your friend Nippitt know all this? I want to go a little bit slow here."
"Oh, John! you are so tiresome! I am sure, and so is Mary, that Pippit is perfectly truthful. Why, you have only to look at him! When he smiles—John, you needn't laugh! I would believe anything that boy said. And here he offers of his own free will to watch the house at night for a week, or as long as is necessary, if we will just give him a shakedown in the shed. I am sure the least we can do is to accept such an offer as that. The old night watchman would never offer to do such a thing."
"The night watchman is not paid to sleep in people's sheds, my dear!"
"Well, he might as well. He never comes through this street at all, that I know of. Well, John, did you tell Lippitt—Pippit—he was to come? I shall feel so safe if he is there!"
"Yes!" said Mr. Aymer slowly. "I told him he might come, and now the question is whether I am only a plain fool, or a—"
"And now we need not lose our sleep!" Mrs. Aymer laid down her knitting, and came forward to rumple her John's hair affectionately, and deposit a kiss on his forehead. "You ought not to lose one wink of sleep just now, John, with stock-taking just coming on, and if I lie awake I am such a fright next day, and you don't like me to be a fright, do you, dear?"
"Neither to be nor to have!" said John. "Sooner shall Pippit occupy the shed for life."
"The loft could be made into a perfectly good bedroom if ever—" Mrs. Aymer cast a guilty glance at her husband, and went to fetch the cribbage board.