“Oh, no, you haven’t,” said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know you’ve got to preserve the unities.”
“So’ve you,” said the burglar, rather glumly. “Instead of sitting here talking impudence and taking the bread out of a poor man’s mouth, what you’d like to be doing is hiding under the bed and screeching at the top of your voice.”
“You’re right, old man,” said Tommy, heartily. “I wonder what they make us do it for? I think the S. P. C. C. ought to interfere. I’m sure it’s neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars act! You’d think editors would know—but what’s the use?”
The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn.
“Well, let’s get through with it,” he said. “God bless you, my little boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night. Bessie shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I shall never burglarize another house—at least not until the June magazines are out. It’ll be your little sister’s turn then to run in on me while I am abstracting the U. S. 4 per cent. from the tea urn and buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss.”
“You haven’t got all the kicks coming to you,” sighed Tommy, crawling out of his chair. “Think of the sleep I’m losing. But it’s tough on both of us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really rob somebody. Maybe you’ll have the chance if they dramatize us.”
“Never!” said the burglar, gloomily. “Between the box office and my better impulses that your leading juveniles are supposed to awaken and the magazines that pay on publication, I guess I’ll always be broke.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tommy, sympathetically. “But I can’t help myself any more than you can. It’s one of the canons of household fiction that no burglar shall be successful. The burglar must be foiled by a kid like me, or by a young lady heroine, or at the last moment by his old pal, Red Mike, who recognizes the house as one in which he used to be the coachman. You have got the worst end of it in any kind of a story.”
“Well, I suppose I must be clearing out now,” said the burglar, taking up his lantern and bracebit.
“You have to take the rest of this chicken and the bottle of wine with you for Bessie and her mother,” said Tommy, calmly.