“I’ll soak you one in a minute,” exclaimed Dolly despairingly.
“All right, sweetness. Sorry. Didn’t mean to butt in. Keep talking. You have the floor.”
“You go round to the back door and wait, keeping your eye on the front steps, where I’ll be. I ring the bell and the hired man comes. I say, ‘Is Mr. Shotter at home?’ If he says yes, I’ll go in and make some sort of spiel about something. But if he’s not, I’ll give you the high sign and you slip in at the back door; and then when the man comes down into the kitchen again you’re waiting and you bean him one with a sandbag. Then you tie him up and come along to the front door and let me in and we go up and grab that stuff. How about it?”
“I bean him one?” said Mr. Molloy doubtfully.
“Cert’nly you bean him one.”
“I couldn’t do it, petty,” said Mr. Molloy. “I’ve never beaned anyone in my life.”
Dolly exhibited the impatience which all wives, from Lady Macbeth downward through the ages, have felt when their schemes appear in danger of being thwarted by the pusillanimity of a husband.
The words, “Infirm of purpose, give me the sandbag!” seemed to be trembling on her lips.
“You poor cake eater!” she cried with justifiable vigour. “You talk as if it needed a college education to lean a stuffed eelskin on a guy’s head. Of course you can do it. You’re behind the kitchen door, see?—and he comes in, see?—and you sim’ly bust him one, see? A feller with one arm and no legs could do it. And, say, if you want something to brace you up, think of all that money lying in the cistern, just waiting for us to come and dip for it!”