hole-and-corner

The thing was reported, and though the Tories sneered at it as a hole-and-corner meeting, Farthingale held another view.

The splendid plans, the world-embracing schemes with which he had dazzled her, had shrunk indeed into a hole-and-corner effort to save his own skin.

When there is real variety, what may be called hole-and-corner work,—conspiracy,—influence of sect or clique,—are impossible.

There is no getting out of it now," remarked the Professor, with a rueful face; "and I don't think you have improved matters by getting married in this hole-and-corner way.

For the Gideonites were one of those strange enthusiastic hole-and-corner sects that spring up naturally in the outlying suburbs of great thinking centres.