“Come; it’s easier than I hoped,” he said to himself. “And father left his keys, too, on the desk. I hope he won’t think of them, and come downstairs after them. That might upset my plans, though I’ve got a lot of old keys in my pocket, and one of them might answer. However, there’s none so good as the real thing.”
Philip had to consider whether he would wait till his father and mother were asleep, or act sooner. He at length decided, in the words of Shakespeare, though he was not familiar with them:
“If ’twere done with when ’tis done, Then, ’twere well it were done quickly.”
The argument was this: If he acted soon, he could make use of his father’s keys, and that would save him trouble. On the other hand, there was some risk that his father might think of them, and, coming downstairs, surprise him. However, Philip didn’t think this was likely, and, in any event, he resolved to take the risk. He could pretend that he had just caught sight of his keys, and was going to carry them upstairs for safekeeping.
Indeed, Philip did not wait more than ten minutes.
“Father must be in bed by this time,” he said to himself.
He took the small lamp by which he was reading, and entered his father’s office.
There lay the keys, and there stood the trunk.
He took the bunch of keys and selected a small one, which he thought likely to fit the trunk.
It did.