“Because of daddy.”
“Daddy?”
“Ay, daddy. You know he’s fond o’ me, is daddy, and, d’ye know, though p’r’aps you mayn’t believe it, I’m raither fond o’ him; but ’e’s a bad ’un, is daddy. He’s bent on mischief, you see, an’ ’e’s set his ’art on my ’elpin’ of ’im. But I wont ’elp ’im—that’s flat. Now, what d’ye think, Hetty,” (here he dropped his voice to almost a whisper and looked solemn), “dad wants to make use o’ me to commit a burglary on Swallow’d-the-poker’s ’ouse.”
“You don’t mean it, Bobby!”
“But I do, Hetty. Dad found out from that rediklous butler that goes veepin’ around our court like a leeky pump, that the old gen’l’man was goin’ to hoffer me this sitivation, an ’e’s bin wery ’ard on me to accept it, so that I may find out the ways o’ the ’ouse where the plate an’ waluables lay, let ’im in some fine dark night an’ ’elp ’im to carry off the swag.”
A distressed expression marked poor Hetty’s reception of this news, but she said never a word.
“Now you won’t tell, Hetty?” said the boy with a look of real anxiety on his face. “It’s not so much his killin’ me I cares about, but I wouldn’t bring daddy to grief for any money. I’d raither ’elp ’im than that. You’ll not say a word to nobody?”
“No, Bobby, I won’t say a word.”
“Vell, you see,” continued the boy, “ven I’d made myself so disagreeable that the old gen’l’man would ’ave nothin’ to do with me, I came straight away, an’ ’ere I am; but it was a trial, let me tell you, specially ven ’e come to mention wages—an sitch a ’eavenly smell o’ roasted wittles come up from the kitchen too at the moment, but I ’ad only to look at Miss Di, to make me as stubborn as a nox or a hass. ‘Wot!’ thinks I to myself, ‘betray that hangel—no, never!’ yet if I was to go into that ’ouse I know I’d do it, for daddy’s got sitch a wheedlin’ way with ’im w’en ’e likes, that I couldn’t ’old hout long—so I giv’ old Swallowed-the-poker sitch a lot o’ cheek that I thought ’e’d kick me right through the winder. He was considerable astonished as well as riled, I can tell you, an’ Miss Di’s face was a pictur’, but the old butler was the sight. He’d got ’is face screwed up into sitch a state o’ surprise that it looked like a eight-day clock with a gamboil. Now, Hetty, I’m goin’ to tell ’ee what’ll take your breath away. I’ve made up my mind to go to Canada!”
Hetty did, on hearing this, look as if her breath had been taken away. When it returned sufficiently she said: