“We changed coats, sir,” said Bobbie, “against my wish, and—”
“There’s alf a dollar sewed in the corner of it,” interrupted Nose, “and he must ’ave known it, or else he’d never ’ave thrown me down on the ground and clutched my neck with both his hands—like so—and then pulled the coat bodily off of me.”
Constable, his legal mind detecting an error in the statement, asked, in view of the fact that the boy had but two hands, how this was done.
“Ast him!” said Master Niedermann. “He knows! He did it. And make him gimme back my coat and my ’alf dollar.”
Constable requested to be informed how the half dollar had been earned or obtained.
“Be the sweat of me brow,” declared the long youth. “How d’ye think? I’d forgot where I put it for the moment, or else he should never have had it. And if he don’t give it me, I give him in charge.”
“’Ang me if I give it back,” said Bobbie, with sudden asperity. “You said a bargain’s a bargain, and so it’ll ’ave to be. I shan’t change again.”
“Then,” said Master Niedermann, oracularly, “I ’ereby beg to give him into custody.”
The constable seemed undecided. Bobbie watched his face, and trembled as he observed a slight increase in gravity. The police station meant at least an ignominious return to the Homes, and to the precise and dogmatically ordered life there. A crowd had gathered round close to the disputant parties, and Bobbie, withdrawing his anxious glance from the policeman for a moment to look around, saw a very little woman, whose face he remembered. Miss Threepenny. Her queer head came to about the waists of the people standing near to her.
“I suppose I’d better,” said the constable.