Careful Harvey D., holding a cigarette carefully between slender white fingers, dressed with studious attention, neatly bearded, with shining hair curled flatly above his pale, wide forehead, was the one to look out from behind a grille and appraise credits. He never acted hastily, and was finding more worry in this moment than ever his years of banking had cost him. He walked now to an ash tray and fastidiously trimmed the end of his cigarette. With the look of worry he regarded his father, now before the fireplace after the manner of one enjoying its warmth, and his Uncle Sharon, who was brushing cigar ash from his rumpled waistcoat to the rug below.

"It's no light thing to do," said Harvey D. in his precise syllables.

The others smoked as if unhearing. Harvey D. walked to the opposite wall and straightened a picture, The Reading of Homer, shifting its frame precisely one half an inch.

"It is overchancy." This from Gideon after a long silence.

Harvey D. paused in his walk, regarded the floor in front of him critically, and stooped to pick up a tiny sc.r.a.p of paper, which he brought to the table and laid ceremoniously in the ash tray.

"Overchancy," he repeated.

"Everything overchancy," said Sharon Whipple after another silence, waving his cigar largely at life. "She's a self-headed little tike," he added a moment later.

"Self-headed!"

Harvey D. here made loose-wristed gestures meaning despair, after which he detected and put in its proper place a burned match beside Sharon's chair.

"A bright boy enough!" said Gideon after another silence, during which Harvey D. had twice paced the length of the room, taking care to bring each of his patent-leather toes precisely across the repeated pattern in the carpet.

"Other one got the gumption, though," said Sharon.

"Oh, gumption!" said Harvey D., as if this were no rare gift. All three smoked again for a pregnant interval.

"Has good points," offered Gideon. "Got all the points, in fact. Good build, good skin, good teeth, good eyes and wide between; nice manners, polite, lively mind."

"Other one got the gumption," mumbled Sharon, stubbornly. They ignored him.

"Head on him for affairs, too," said Harvey D. He went to a far corner of the room and changed the position of an immense upholstered chair so that it was equidistant from each wall. "Other one--hear he took all his silver and spent it foolishly--must have been eight or nine dollars--this one wanted to save it. Got some idea about the value of money."

"Don't like to see it show too young," submitted Sharon.

"Can't show too young," declared Harvey D.

"Can't it?" asked Sharon, mildly.

"Bright little chap--no denying that," said Gideon. "Bright as a new penny, smart as a whip. Talks right. Other chap mumbles."

"Got the gumption, though." Thus Sharon once more.

Long silences intervened after each speech in this dialogue.

"Head's good," said Harvey D. "One of those long heads like father's.

Other one's head is round."

"My own head is round." This was Sharon. His tone was plaintive.

"Of course neither of them has a nose," said Gideon.

He meant that neither of the twins had a nose in the Whipple sense, but no comment on this lack seemed to be required. It would be unfair to expect a true nose in any but born Whipples.

Gideon Whipple from before the fireplace swayed forward on his toes and waved his half-smoked cigar.

"The long and short of it is--the Whipple stock has run low. We're dying out."

"Got to have new blood, that's sure," said Sharon. "Build it up again."

"I'd often thought of adopting," said Harvey D., "in the last two years," he carefully added.

"This youngster," said Gideon; "of course we should never have heard of him but for Pat's mad adventure, starting off with G.o.d only knows what visions in her little head."

"She'd have gone, too," said Sharon, dusting ashes from his waistcoat to the rug. "Self-headed!"

"She demands a brother," resumed Gideon, "and the family sorely needs she should have one, and this youngster seems eligible, and so--" He waved his cigar.

"There really doesn't seem any other way," said Harvey D. at the table, putting a disordered pile of magazines into neat alignment.

"What about pedigree?" demanded Sharon. "Any one traced him back?"

"I believe _his_ father is here," said Harvey D.

"I know him," said Sharon. "A mad, swearing, confident fellow, reckless, vagrant-like. A printer by trade. Looks healthy enough. Don't seem blemished. But what about his father?"

"Is the boy's mother known?" asked Harvey D.

"Easy to find out," said Gideon. "Ask Sarah Marwick," and he went to the wall and pushed a b.u.t.ton. "Sarah knows the history of every one, scandalous and otherwise."

Sarah Marwick came presently to the door, an austere spinster in black gown and white ap.r.o.n. Her nose, though not Whipple in any degree, was still eminent in a way of its own, and her lips shut beneath it in a straight line. She waited.

"Sarah," said Gideon, "do you know a person named Cowan? David Cowan, I believe it is."

Sarah's mien of professional reserve melted.

"Do I know Dave Cowan?" she challenged. "Do I know him? I'd know his hide in a tanyard."

"That would seem sufficient," remarked Gideon.

"A harum-scarum good-for-nothing--no harm in him. A great talker--make you think black is white if you listen. Don't stay here much--in and out, no one knows where to. Says the Center is slow. What do you think of that? I guess we're fast enough for most folks."

"What about his father?" said the stock-breeding Sharon. "Know anything about who he was?"

"Lord, yes! Everybody round here used to know old Matthew Cowan. Lived up in Geneseo, where Dave was born, but used to come round here preaching. Queer old customer with a big head. He wasn't a regular preacher; he just took it up, being a carpenter by trade--like our Lord Jesus, he used to say in his preaching. He had some outlandish kind of religion that didn't take much. He said the world was coming to an end on a certain day, and folks had better prepare for it, but it didn't end when he said it would; and he went back to carpentering week-days and preaching on the Lord's Day; and one time he fell off a roof and hit on his head, and after that he was outlandisher than ever, and they had to look after him. He never did get right again. They said he died writing a telegram to our Lord on the wall of his room. This Dave Cowan, he argued about religion with the Reverend Mallet right up in the post office one day. He'll argue about anything! He's audacious!"

"But the father was all right till he had the fall?" asked Harvey D. "I mean he was healthy and all that?"

"Oh, healthy enough--big, strong old codger. He used to say he could cradle four acres of grain in a day when he was a boy on a farm, or split and lay up three hundred and fifty rails. Strong enough."

"And this David Cowan, his son--he married someone from here?"

"Her that was Effie Freeman and her mother was a Penniman, cousin to old Judge Penniman. A sweet, lovely little thing, Effie was, too, just as nice as you'd want to meet, and so--"