tin pan as he walked through Willow Street —
“Oh!” ejaculated the curious Dot, right out loud, “do you use a whistle, or a bell, or anything, in your business, please?”
My goodness! how that man jumped! Dot thought he would fall right over backward, and the round ray of the spotlight in his hand shot up to the ceiling and all about the room before it fell on Dot, standing over by the hall door.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” gasped the man, in utter amazement. “Wha – what did you say, miss?”
He was not really a man, after all. Dot saw by his lean face that he was nothing more than a half grown boy. So every little bit of fear she had felt for the burglar departed. He could not really be a journeyman burglar – only an apprentice, just learning his trade. Dot became confidential at once, and came closer to him.
“I – I never met anybody in your business before,” said the smallest Corner House girl. “If you please, do you only come into folks’s houses at night?”
“Huh!” croaked the young man, hoarsely. “Seems ter me we’re workin’ both night an’ day at this season. I never did see it so hard on a poor feller before.”
“Oh, my!” exclaimed Dot. “Do you have busy seasons, and slack seasons, like the peddlers?”
“I should say we did, miss,” agreed the other, still in a complaining tone.
“My! What makes this time of year a busy one?” demanded the inquisitive Dorothy.
“The frost, miss.”
“The frost?” repeated the little girl, quite puzzled.
“Yes, miss. The frost catches folks napping, as ye may say.”
Dot puzzled over that for a moment, too. Did folks sleep harder when it was frosty and dark out-of-doors, than in summer? The young man stood and watched her. It must be rather embarrassing to be interrupted in the midst of a burglary.
“Don’t – don’t mind me,” said Dot, politely. “Don’t let me stop your work.”
“No, miss. I’m a-waiting for my boss,” said the other.
There! Dot had known he must be only an apprentice burglar – he was so young.
“Then – then there’s more of you?” she asked.
“More of me? No, ma’am,” said the amazed young man. “You see all there is of me. I never was very husky – no, ma’am.”
He seemed to be a very diffident burglar. He quite puzzled Dot.
“Don’t – don’t you ever get afraid in your business?” she asked. “I should think you would.”
“Yep. I’m some afraid when I wipe a joint,” admitted the young man. “Ye see, I ain’t used to the hot lead, yet.”
Dot thought over that answer a good while. Of course, she could not be expected to understand the professional talk of burglars – never having associated with that gentry. What “wiping a joint” meant she could not imagine; and what burglars did with hot lead was quite as puzzling.
“I – I suppose your boss is a journeyman burglar?” queried the little girl, at last.
“Wha-at!” gasped the young man. Then he grinned hugely. “That’s what some of his customers calls him, miss,” he agreed.
“Don’t – don’t you think there is some danger in your staying here alone?” asked Dot. “Suppose Uncle Rufus should come down stairs and catch you?”
“Hullo! who’s Uncle Rufus?” asked the young man.
“Why – why, he’s Uncle Rufus. He works for us – ”
“Oh! he’s the colored man?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why, he is down,” said the young man, coolly. “He let us in. We had to come early, ’cause we’ve got so much work to do, and we didn’t get through at Pinkney’s till nine o’clock last night.”
“At Pinkney’s?” cried Dot, as the young man yawned. “Did – did you burgle Sammy’s house, too?”
“What d’ye mean – ‘burgle’?” asked the young man, biting off the yawn and staring again at Dot.
“I beg your pardon,” said Dot, gently. “But – but what do you call it?”
Just then the door of the butler’s pantry opened and Uncle Rufus looked in.
“Dat oddah plumber done come, young man,” he said. “Dis ain’t no time in de mawnin’ – ‘fo’ six o’clock – t’ come t’ folks’s houses nohow t’ mend a busted watah-pipe – nossir! Yuh got all ob dem silber pieces out ob de safe?”
“They’re all out, Uncle,” said the young man.
“Whuffo’ dey run dat pipe t’rough de silber closet, I dunno,” complained the old darkey. “I use t’ tell Mistah Peter Stowah dat it was one piece of plain foolishness. What if de bat’room is ober dis closet – ”
He disappeared, his voice trailing off into silence, and the young man followed him. Dot was left breathless and rather abashed. Then the young man was not a burglar after all; he was only a plumber!
She crept back to bed, and said nothing to anybody about her early morning visit to the lower floor. But the young man told Uncle Rufus, and Uncle Rufus, chuckling hugely, told Mrs. MacCall.
“I’d like to know, for goodness’ sake, what you would have done if it had been a really truly burglar, Dot Kenway?” Agnes demanded, when the story was repeated at the breakfast table.
“I’d have given him my silver knife and fork and mug, and asked him to go away without waking up Ruthie,” declared the smallest Corner House girl, having thought it all out by that time.
“I believe you would – you blessed child!” cried Ruth, jumping up to kiss her.
“But suppose it had been Santa Claus?” Tess murmured, “and you had disturbed him filling our stockings?”
“Pooh!” said Dot. “If he’d felled down the chimbley like that brick, he wouldn’t have been filling stockings.”
CHAPTER IV – THE FAMILY ALBUM – AND OTHER THINGS
The day before Christmas was the busiest day of all. The dressing of the tree must be finished and the trimming and festooning of the big dining room completed. Neale O’Neil came over early to help the Corner House girls. He was a slim, rosy-cheeked, flaxen-haired boy, as agile as a monkey, and almost always smiling.
Ruth and Agnes would not hear to his helping trim the tree; but it was Neale’s agility that made it possible for the rope of green to be festooned from the heavy ceiling cornices. Uncle Rufus was much too stiff with rheumatism for such work.
“Well! boys are some good, you must admit,” Agnes said to Ruth, for the oldest Corner House girl was inclined to be a carping critic of the
