Bessie
shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I
shall never burglarize another house--at least not until the June
magazines are out. It'll be your little sister's turn then to run in
on me while I am abstracting the U. S. 4 per cent. from the tea urn
and buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss."
"You haven't got all the kicks coming to you," sighed Tommy, crawling
out of his chair. "Think of the sleep I'm losing. But it's tough on
both of us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really
rob somebody. Maybe you'll have the chance if they dramatize us."
"Never!" said the burglar, gloomily. "Between the box office and my
better impulses that your leading juveniles are supposed to awaken
and the magazines that pay on publication, I guess I'll always be
broke."
"I'm sorry," said Tommy, sympathetically. "But I can't help myself
any more than you can. It's one of the canons of household fiction
that no burglar shall be successful. The burglar must be foiled by
a kid like me, or by a young lady heroine, or at the last moment by
his old pal, Red Mike, who recognizes the house as one in which he
used to be the coachman. You have got the worst end of it in any kind
of a story."
"Well, I suppose I must be clearing out now," said the burglar, taking
up his lantern and bracebit.
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