They were established on so firm a basis of mutual confidence that when he rose and walked to the table she didn’t lift her eyes from the paper on which she was drawing a diagram of her father’s house.  He stood watching her nimble fingers, fascinated by the boldness of her plan for restoring amity between Shaver’s grandfathers, and filled with admiration for her resourcefulness.

He asked a few questions as to exits and entrances and fixed in his mind a very accurate picture of the home of her father.  She then proceeded to enlighten him as to the ways and means of entering the home of her father-in-law, which she sketched with equal facility.

“There’s a French window—­a narrow glass door—­on the veranda.  I think you might get in there!” She made a jab with the pencil.  “Of course I should hate awfully to have you get caught!  But you must have had a lot of experience, and with all the help I’m giving you—!”

A sudden lifting of her head gave him the full benefit of her eyes and he averted his gaze reverently.

“There’s always a chance o’ bein’ nabbed, miss,” he suggested with feeling.

Shaver’s mother wielded the same hypnotic power, highly intensified, that he had felt in Shaver.  He knew that he was going to attempt what she asked; that he was committed to the project of robbing two houses merely to please a pretty young woman who invited his cooeperation at the point of a revolver!

“Papa’s always a sound sleeper,” she was saying.  “When I was a little girl a burglar went all through our house and carried off his clothes and he never knew it until the next morning.  But you’ll have to be careful at Mr. Talbot’s, for he suffers horribly from insomnia.”

“They got any o’ them fancy burglar alarms?” asked The Hopper as he concluded his examination of her sketches.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you about that!” she cried contritely.  “There’s nothing of the kind at Mr. Talbot’s, but at papa’s there’s a switch in the living-room, right back of a bust—­a white marble thing on a pedestal.  You turn it off there.  Half the time papa forgets to switch it on before he goes to bed.  And another thing—­be careful about stumbling over that bearskin rug in the hall.  People are always sticking their feet into its jaws.”

“I’ll look out for ut, miss.”

Burglar alarms and the jaws of wild beasts were not inviting hazards.  The programme she outlined so light-heartedly was full of complexities.  It was almost pathetic that any one could so cheerfully and irresponsibly suggest the perpetration of a crime.  The terms she used in describing the loot he was to filch were much stranger to him than Chinese, but it was fairly clear that at the Talbot house he was to steal a blue-and-white thing and at the Wilton’s a red one.  The form and size of these articles she illustrated with graceful gestures.

“If I thought you were likely to make a mistake I’d—­I’d go with you!” she declared.