Suppose Aunt Harriet's rigid conscience obliged her to communicate with the police and deliver Percy into the hands of justice.

Such a horrible possibility must be avoided at all costs.

The sound of a latch-key in the door made her start.

In a panic she rushed to the old cupboard and pushed back the secret drawer into its place.
When Miss Beach entered the dining-room her nephew and niece were sitting reading by the fireside.

Their choice of literature might perhaps have astonished her, for Percy was poring over Sir Oliver Lodge's "Man and the Universe," while Winona's nose was buried in Herbert Spencer's "Sociology," but if indeed she noticed it, she perhaps set it down to a laudable desire to improve their minds, and placed the matter to their credit.