Later in the day tradesmen's carts rattled up the back drive with similar missives, not a little to the bewilderment of the servants of the house, who shook their heads and wished Mrs Parker would make a speedy recovery.
Tom adroitly captured the booty, and half won over Raffles to aid and abet in the great undertaking.
"Good old Raffy," said he, as the two staggered across the hall with one of Miss Jill's private boxes between them; "would you like a threepenny bit ?" Raffles, whose ideas of a tip were elastic, admitted that he was open to receive even the smallest coin.
"All right, mum's the word.

Jill and I have a thing on, and we don't want it spoiled by the slaveys." Raffles said that, as far as he knew, the "slaveys" were thinking about anything else than the proceedings of the two young Oliphants.
"Besides," said he, "being 'olidays, there's only me and the cook, and a maid--and she's took up with nursing Mrs Parker." "Poor old Parker! How is she?
Pretty chippy?
Sorry she's laid up.
All serene, Raff.

Keep it mum, and you shall have the threepenny.
Jolly heavy box that--that's the cocoa-nuts." "Oh, you're going to have a feast, are you ?" said Raffles.
"Getting on that way," said Tom.

"We can't ask you, you know, because you'll have to wait.

But you shall have some of the leavings if you back us up." With locked doors that night Tom and Jill unpacked and took stock of their commissariat.
"Thirty-six herrings cut up in four," said Tom, with an arithmetical precision which would have gratified Mr Armstrong, "makes 144 goes of herring.