Part 52

They banged the door shut and their footsteps receded. Patty was rocking back and forth in a species of hysterics, stuffing the corner of the sheet into her mouth to keep from laughing audibly. The burglar's teeth were chattering.

"Lord!" he breathed. "It may be funny for you, Miss. But it means the penitentiary for me."

Patty interrupted her hysterics and regarded him with disgust.

"It would mean expulsion for me, or at least something awfully unpleasant. But that's no reason for going all to pieces. You're a nice sort of a burglar! Brace up and be a sport!"

He mopped his brow and removed another portion of icing.

"You must be an awful amateur to break into a house like this," she said contemptuously. "Don't you know the silver's plated?"

"I didn't know nuthin' about it," he said sullenly. "I see the window open over the shed roof and I clum up. I was hungry and was lookin' for somethin' to eat. I ain't had nothin' since yesterday mornin'."

Patty reached to the floor beside her.

"Have some pie."

The man ducked aside as it was poked at him.

"W-what's that?" he gasped.

He was as nervous as a mouse in a cage.

"Lemon pie. It looks a little messy but it's all right. The only thing the matter with it is that it has lost its meringue top. That's mostly on your head. The rest of it is spread over me and the laundry floor and Evalina Smith's bed and the clothes chute."

"Oh!" he murmured in evident relief, as he rubbed his hand over his hair for the fourth time. "I was wonderin' what the blame stuff was."

"But the lemon's all here," she urged. "You'd better eat it. It's quite nourishing, I believe."

He accepted the pie and fell to eating it with an eagerness that carried out the truth of his assertion as to yesterday's breakfast.

Patty watched him, her natural curiosity struggling with her acquired politeness. The curiosity triumphed.

"Do you mind telling me how you came to be a burglar? You make such a remarkably bad one, that I should think you would have chosen almost any other profession."

He told his story between bites. To one more experienced in police records, it might have sounded a trifle fishy, but he had an honest face and blue eyes, and it never entered her head to doubt him. The burglar commenced it sullenly; no one had ever believed him yet and he wasn't expecting her to. He would like to have invented something a little more plausible, but he lacked the imagination to tell a convincing lie. So, as usual, he lamely told the truth.

Patty listened with strained attention. His tale was somewhat muffled by lemon pie, and his vocabulary did not always coincide with her own, but she managed to get the gist of it.

By rights he was a gardener. In the last place where he worked he used to sleep in the attic, because the gentleman he was away a lot, and the lady she was afraid not to have a man in the house. And a gas-fitter, that he had always thought was his friend, give him some beer one night and got him drunk, and took away the key of the back door. And while he (the gardener) was sound asleep on the children's sand pile under the apple tree in the back yard, the gas-fitter entered the house and stole an overcoat and a silver coffee-pot and a box of cigars and a bottle of whisky and two umbrellas. And they proved it on him (the gardener) and he was sent up for two years. And when he come out, no one wouldn't give him no work.

"An' ye can't make me believe," he added bitterly, "that that beer wasn't doped!"

"Oh, but it was terrible of you to get drunk!" said Patty, shocked.

"'Twas an accident," he insisted.

"If you are sure that you'll never do it again," she said, "I'll get you a job. But you must promise, on your word of honor as a gentleman. You know I couldn't recommend a drunkard."

The man grinned feebly.

"I guess ye'll not be findin' anybody that will be wantin' a jailbird."

"Oh, yes, I will! I know exactly the man. He's a friend of mine, and he likes jailbirds. He realizes that it's only luck that made him a millionaire instead of a convict. He always gives a man a chance to start again. He used to have a murderer in charge of his greenhouses, and a cattle thief to milk the cows. I'm sure he'll like you. Come with me, and I'll write you a letter of introduction."