"'IT'S A JUDGMENT,' HE SAID. 'OH, 'ERE'S A THING TO 'APPEN TO A CHAP!'"
"Send for the police," was the unfortunate criminal's only reply. "I'd rather you would—honest, I'd rather."
"I daren't," said Jane; "and, besides, I've no one to send. I hate the police. I wish he'd never been born."
"You've a feeling 'art, miss," said the burglar. "But them cats is really a little bit too thick."
"Look here," said Jane. "I won't call the police. And I am quite a real little girl, though I talk older than the kind you have met before when you've been doing your burglings. And they are real cats—and they want real milk—and—didn't you say the cow was like somebody's Daisy that you used to know? Well, then, perhaps you know how to milk cows?"
"Perhaps I does," was the burglar's cautious rejoinder.
"Then," said Jane, "if you will only milk ours, you don't know how we shall always love you."
The burglar replied that loving was all very well.
"If those cats only had a good, long, wet, thirsty drink of milk," Jane went on, with eager persuasion, "they'll lie down and go to sleep as likely as not, and then the police won't come back. But if they go on mewing like this he will, and then I don't know what'll become of us or you either."
This argument seemed to decide the criminal. Jane fetched the wash-bowl from the sink and he prepared to milk the cow. At this instant boots were heard on the stairs.