"Oh, Susan!" Lionel cried earnestly, thoroughly alarmed. "Don't tell him! He'll be so awfully angry!"
"You should have thought of that before, Master Lionel," she reminded him.
"I know I should! Oh, please don't tell him! Think what a fearful row you will get me into!"
"I want to do what is right," Susan said, her kind face full of distress. "I cannot imagine, Master Lionel, how you could have come here and pried into those locked drawers! Then you were going to take away that flask of gunpowder and bag of shot without asking leave! You knew well enough Sir Richard would have refused them to you! You have behaved very badly!"
Lionel was silent, thinking what the consequences would be if Susan betrayed him. He did not fear his mother's anger—that he could face unabashed—but he did fear his grandfather's.
"I believe it is my duty to inform Sir Richard," Susan said again.
"Oh, don't tell him, please don't!" Lionel pleaded.
"Tell mother if you like, but not grandfather, won't it do if you tell mother?"
Susan considered the matter, and finally decided that if she told Mrs. Compton she would relieve herself from all sense of responsibility.
"Very well, Master Lionel," she said. "I will tell your mother what you've been up to this afternoon, and she can do as she pleases about informing your grandfather of your conduct."