Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

873 страница из 895

It was his panacea for the heart’s qualms, as it is the panacea, for heaven knows how many thousands in London who rise and fast behind their counters till they have stolen the price of their breakfasts.

He told his mistress how he had succeeded by chicanery in realising a good sum for her.

She complimented him.

“There’s no harm hoodwinking your customers,” she said. “Besides, all’s fair in trade.”

As he repeated this sentence after her he thought that the elder of the two women sighed.

He had ascertained from the servant girl that this lady’s name was Grover.

He lay awake that night, trying to guess who Miss Stanbridge and Mrs. Grover could possibly be.

He did not think they were real ladies.

In the first place he had met them in a house that was frequented by only the scum of the London streets.

Besides that, there was something very different about them to the young ladies who sometimes stopped him to ask questions about his nests in the Bayswater-road or in Grosvenor-place.

Miss Stanbridge, it was true, had the voice and manners of a lady, but in those of Mrs. Grover he had often detected something which reminded him of the rustics among whom he had been brought up.