“Perhaps Aunt Harriet ought to know.”

“She mustn’t know:  mustn’t, I tell you!  I say, Win, I’m not at all sure that what I’ve just done isn’t a chargeable offense—­I believe they call it a felony.  You wouldn’t like to see me put into prison, would you?  Then hold your tongue about it!  Give me your word!  Can you keep a secret?”

“I promise!” gasped Winona (Percy was squeezing her little finger nail in orthodox fashion and the agony was acute).  “I promise faithfully.”

She was in a terrible quandary.  Her natural straightforwardness urged her to make a clean breast of the whole affair.  Had she been the actual transgressor she would certainly have done so and faced the consequences.  But this was Percy’s secret, not her own.  He was no favorite with his aunt, and so outrageous an act would prejudice him fatally in her eyes.  The hint about prison frightened Winona.  She knew nothing of law, but she thought it highly probable that burning a will was a punishable crime.  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.  Percy took his departure next morning, and Winona saw him off at the railway station.

“Remember, you’ve to keep that business dark,” he reminded her.  “Aunt Harriet must never find out.  She’s been jawing me no end about responsibility, and looking after the kids and supporting the mater and all that.  Rubbed it in hard, I can tell you!  Great Juggins!  Do I look like the mainstay of a family?”

As Winona watched his boyish face laughing at her from the window of the moving train she decided that he certainly did not.  She sighed as she turned to leave the station.  Life seemed suddenly to have assumed new perplexities.  Percy’s act weighed heavily on her mind.  It seemed such a base return for all Aunt Harriet was doing on their behalf.  She longed to thank her for her kindness and say how much she appreciated going to the High School, but she could not find the words.  Theknowledge of the secret raised an extra barrier between herself and her aunt.  So she sat at lunch time even shyer and more speechless than usual, and let the ball of conversation persistently drop.

“Fretting for her brother, I suppose,” thought Miss Beach.  “She can talk fast enough with friends of her own age.  Well, I suppose an old body like myself mustn’t expect to be company for a girl of fifteen!”