Once upon a time there was a crook who only thought about how to get money. What he hated most was when people were polite to each other, saying things like “please”, “thank you”, and “don’t mention it”. The crook thought all those kinds of words were a waste, so he spent a lot of time inventing a machine which could steal words. With this machine, he planned to steal “please”, “thank you”, “don’t mention it”, and similar words people used to be polite. After he stole these words, he intended to take them apart and sell the letters to book publishers. After he started up his machine, people would open their mouths, intending to say kind and polite things, but nothing came out. All those words ended up inside the big machine. The crook was happy with his success, but he didn’t expect a couple of very special little girls. Those girls were deaf, and had to communicate with sign language. Because the machine couldn’t steal gestures, these girls continued being kind and polite. Soon they realized what had been happening to everyone else, and they found out about the crook and his plan. The girls followed him and found the machine busy separating all the words into letters. They approached the machine and started being polite to each other. Try as it might, the machine couldn’t steal those words, and it started to suffer a power overload, which got more and more serious as two girls went on communicating. Finally, it exploded; sending all the letters it had gathered flying into the sky. These letters started coming down, like rain, and most ended up in the sea. After that, everyone could be polite again. The anger and the arguments stooped, proving that good manners are very useful. Seeing all those letters fall into the sea, those little girls had an idea. A little while later they opened a factory, making alphabetic spaghetti soup! 1. What the crook hated most was ______ .