Two hundred years ago there were lots of things a fellow might have
done.'

"'Yes, I know what's in your mind,' I says: 'pirates.'

"'Yes, pirates would be all right,' says he; 'they got plenty of sea-air
and exercise, and didn't need to join a blooming funeral club.'

"'You've got ideas above your station,' I says. 'You work hard, and one
day you'll have a milk-shop of your own, and be walking out with a pretty
housemaid on your arm, feeling as if you were the Prince of Wales
himself.'

"'Stow it!' he says; 'it makes me shiver for fear it might come true. I'm
not cut out for a respectable cove, and I won't be one neither, if I can
help it!'

"'What do you mean to be, then?' I says; 'we've all got to be something,
until we're stiff 'uns.'

"'Well,' he says, quite cool-like, 'I think I shall be a burglar.'

"I dropped into the seat opposite and stared at him. If any other lad
had said it I should have known it was only foolishness, but he was just
the sort to mean it.

"'It's the only calling I can think of,' says he, 'that has got any
element of excitement left in it.'

"'You call seven years at Portland "excitement," do you?' says I,