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A Thief in the Night: a Book of Raffles' Adventures by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
page 59 of 234 (25%)
for the miser who hoards in his cellar what was meant for mankind!
Come, Bunny, lead the way. This baby is worth nursing. It would
break my heart if anything happened to it now!"

So we celebrated my first night in the furnished house; and I slept
beyond belief, slept as I never was to sleep there again. But it
was strange to hear the milkman in the early morning, and the
postman knocking his way along the street an hour later, and to be
passed over by one destroying angel after another. I had come down
early enough, and watched through the drawing-room blind the
cleansing of all. the steps in the street but ours. Yet Raffles had
evidently been up some time; the house seemed far purer than
overnight as though he had managed to air it room by room; and from
the one with the gas-stove there came a frizzling sound that
fattened the heart.

I only would I had the pen to do justice to the week I spent in-doors
on Campden Hill! It might make amusing reading; the reality for me
was far removed from the realm of amusement. Not that I was denied
many a laugh of suppressed heartiness when Raffles and I were
together. But half our time we very literally saw nothing of each
other. I need not say whose fault that was. He would be quiet; he
was in ridiculous and offensive earnest about his egregious Cure.
Kinglake he would read by the hour together, day and night, by the
hanging lamp, lying up-stairs on the best bed. There was daylight
enough for me in the drawing-room below; and there I would sit
immersed in criminous tomes weakly fascinated until I shivered and
shook in my stocking soles. Often I longed to do something
hysterically desperate, to rouse Raffles and bring the street about
our ears; once I did bring him about mine by striking a single note
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