Gee! but that makes me feel mean! Why, if I'd known he was goin' to blubber himself to sleep that way, I'd hung around and cheered him up. He'd been so brash about this runaway business, though, that I never suspicioned he'd go to pieces the minute he was left alone. And they look different when they're asleep, don't they? I guess I must have put in the next two hours' wonderin' how it was that a nice, bright youngster like that should come to quit home. If he'd come from some tenement house, where it was a case of pop bein' on the island, and maw rushin' the can and usin' the poker on him, you wouldn't think anything of it. But here he has his bubble, and his high priced terrier, and things like that, and yet he does the skip. Well, there wa'n't any answer.
Not hearin' him stirrin' when I gets up in the mornin', I makes up my mind to let him snooze as long as he likes. So I has breakfast and goes out front with the mornin' papers. It got to be after nine o'clock, and I was just thinkin' of goin' up to see how he was gettin' on, when I sees a big green tourin' car come dashin' down into the park and turn into my front drive. There was a crowd in it; but, before I can get up, out flips a stunnin' lookin' bunch of dry goods, all veils and silk dust coat, and wants to know if I'm Shorty McCabe: which I says I am.
"Then you have my boy here, have you?" she shoots out. And, say, by the suspicious way she looks at me, you'd thought I'd been breakin' into some nursery. I'll admit she was a beaut, all right; but the hard look I gets from them big black eyes didn't win me for a cent.
"Maybe if I knew who you was, ma'am," says I, "we'd get along faster."
That don't soothe her a bit. She gives me one glare, and then whirls around and shouts to a couple of tough lookin' bruisers that was in the car.
"Quick!" she sings out. "Watch the rear and side doors. I'm sure he's here."
And the mugs pile out and proceed to plant themselves around the house.
"Sa-a-ay," says I, "this begins to look excitin'. Is it a raid, or what? Who are the husky boys?"
"Those men are in my employ," says she.
"Private sleut's?" says I.