"Outside?"
"Didn't you notice? I checked it with my hat, rather than have a row. I ought to be ashamed of myself, I know, but I'm a moral coward before a coat-room attendant. I remember keeping tabs one summer, and--will you believe me?--a common, ordinary, every-day three-dollar straw lid set me back twenty-two dollars and thirty cents in tips. But I hope I'm not boring you."
"Oh, how can you?" she protested, lips tremulous with indignation.
"Don't flatter; I bore even myself at times."
"I don't mean that, and you know I don't. How can you sit there joking when you--when you've just--"
"Come off the job?" he caught her up as she faltered. "But why not? I feel anything but sad about it. It was a good job--wasn't it?--a clean haul, a clear getaway. Thanks, of course, to you."
She responded, not without some difficulty: "Please! I wouldn't have dared if he hadn't tried to get at that sword."
"Just like him, too!" Blue Serge observed with a flash of indignation: "his kind, I mean--less burglars than bunglers, with no professional pride, no decent instincts, no human consideration. They never stop to think it's tough enough for a householder to come home to a cracked crib without finding a total stranger to boot--a man he's never even seen before, like as not--ah--weltering on the premises--"
"Oh, do be serious!"
"Must I? If you wish."