'Mr. Arthur,' Jerry began, very low, as if afraid of being heard, 'if I
should give Maude something for her very own, and she should accept and
keep it a good while, and then some day I should take it from her, when
she did not know it, and hide it, and not give it up, would that be
stealing?'
'Certainly. Why do you ask?'
Jerry did not say why she asked, but put the same question to him she
had put to Harold:
'If they find the one who took the diamonds will they send him to state
prison?'
'Undoubtedly. They ought to.'
'And cut off his hair?'
She was threading Arthur's luxuriant locks caressingly, and almost
pityingly, with her fingers as she asked the last question, to which he
replied, shortly:
'Yes.'
'And make him eat bread and water and mush?'
'Yes; I believe so.'
'And sleep on a board?'
'Yes, or something as bad.'
'And make him work awful hard until his hands are blistered?'
Now she had in hers Arthur's hands, soft and white as a woman's, and
seemed to be calculating how much hard work it would take to blister
hands like these.
'Yes, work till his hands drop off,' Arthur said.
With a shudder, she continued:
'I could not bear it: could you?'
'Bear it? No; I should die in a week. Why, what does ail you? You are
shaking like a leaf.
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