“Well,” said Harvey D., “I suppose we should call it settled.”

“Overchancy,” said Gideon, “but so would any boy be.  This one is an excellent prospect, sound as a nut, bright, well-mannered.”

“He made an excellent impression on me after church to-day,” said Harvey D.  “Quite refined.”

“Re-fined,” said Sharon, “is something any one can get to be.  It’s manners you learn.”  But again he was ignored.

“Something clean and manly about him,” said Harvey D.  “I should like him—­like him for my son.”

“Has it occurred to either of you,” asked Gideon, “that this absurd father will have to be consulted in such a matter?”

“But naturally!” said Harvey D.  “An arrangement would have to be made with him.”

“But has it occurred to you,” persisted Gideon, “that he might be absurd enough not to want one of his children taken over by strangers?”

“Strangers?” said Harvey D. in mild surprise, as if Whipples could with any justice be thus described.

Gideon, however, was able to reason upon this.

“He might seem both at first, I dare say; but we can make plain to him the advantages the boy would enjoy.  I imagine they would appeal to him.  I imagine he would consent readily.”

“Oh, but of course,” said Harvey D.  “The father is a nobody, and the boy, left to himself, would probably become another nobody, without training, without education, without advantages.  The father would know all this.”

[Illustration:  “’I CAN ALWAYS FIND A LITTLE TIME FOR BANKERS.  I NEVER KEPT ONE WAITING YET AND I WON’T BEGIN NOW.’”]

“Perhaps he doesn’t even know he is a nobody,” suggested Sharon.

“I think we can persuade him,” said Harvey D., for once not meaning precisely what his words would seem to mean.

“I hope so,” said Gideon, “Pat will be pleased.”

“I shall like to have a son,” said Harvey D., frankly wistful.

“Other one has the gumption,” said Sharon, casting a final rain of cigar ash upon the abused rug at his feet.

“The sands of the Whipple family were running out—­we renew them,” said Gideon, cheerily.

CHAPTER VII

The ensuing week was marked for the Cowan-Penniman household by sensational developments.  To Dave Cowan on Monday morning, standing at his case in the Advance office, nimbly filling his stick with type, following the loosely written copy turned in by Sam Pickering, the editor, had portentously come a messenger from the First National Bank to know if Mr. Cowan could find it convenient that day to give Harvey D. Whipple a few moments of his time.  Dave’s business life had hitherto not included any contact with bankers; he had simply never been in a bank.  The message left him not a little disturbed.