so I took up my Crimes again.
Really, ain't history the limit?--the things they done in it and got
away with--never even being arrested or fined or anything!

"Pretty soon I could hear the merry prattle of the little ones again out
in the side yard. Ain't it funny how they get the gambling spirit so
young? I'd hear little Margery say: 'I bet you can't!' And Rupert,
Junior, would say:' I bet I can, too!' And off they'd go ninety miles on
a straight track: 'I bet you'd be afraid to!'--'I bet I wouldn't
be!'--'I bet you'd run as fast!'--'I bet I never would!' Ever see such
natural-born gamblers? And it's all about what Rupert, Junior, would do
if he seen a big tiger in some woods--Rupert betting he'd shoot it dead,
right between the eyes, and Margery taking the other end. She has by far
the best end of it, I think, it being at least a forty-to-one shot that
Rupert, the boy scout, is talking high and wide. And I drop into the
Crimes again at a good, murderous place with stilettos.

"I can't tell even now how it happened. All I know is that it was two
o'clock, and all at once it was five-thirty P.M. by a fussy gold clock
over on the mantel with a gold young lady, wearing a spear, standing on
top of it. I woke up without ever suspicioning that I'd been asleep.
Anyway, I think I'm feeling better, and I stretch, though careful,
account of the dame in the plush bonnet with forget-me-nots; and I lie
there thinking mebbe I'll enter the ring again to-morrow for some other
truck I was needing, and thinking how quiet and peaceful it is--how
awful quiet! I got it then, all right. That quiet! If you'd known little
Margery better you'd know how sick that quiet made me all at once. My
gizzard or something turned clean over.

"I let out a yell for them kids right where I lay. Then I bounded to my
feet and run through the rooms downstairs yelling. No sign of 'em! And
out into the kitchen--and here was Tillie, the maid, and Yetta, the
cook, both saying it's queer, but they ain't heard a sound of 'em
either, for near an hour. So I yelled out back to an old hick of a
gardener that's deef, and he comes running; but he don't know a thing on
earth about the kids or anything else. Then I am sick! I send Tillie one
way along the street and the gardener the other way to find out if any
neighbours had seen 'em. Then in a minute this here Yetta, the cook,
says: 'Why, now, Miss Margery was saying she'd go downtown to buy some
candy,' and Yetta says