“Calling from her room upstairs to fool you,” warned Sharon.  “Don’t I know her flummididdles?”

But the look of bewilderment on Merle’s face had become a look of pure fright.  He raised a hand sternly to Sharon.

“Once more,” he called, hoarsely, and again listened with widening eyes.  He lifted his face to the group, the receiver still at his ear.  “She says—­good heaven!  She says, ’I’ve gone A.W.O.L., and now I’m safe and married—­I’m married to Wilbur Cowan.’” He uttered his brother’s name in the tone of a shocked true Whipple.

“Good heaven!” echoed Harvey D.

“I’m blest!” said Gideon.

“I snum to goodness!” said the dazed Sharon.  “The darned skeesicks!”

Merle still listened.  Again he raised a now potent hand.

“She says she doesn’t know how she came to do it, except that he put a comether on her.”

He hung up the receiver and fell into a chair before the table that held the telephone.

“Scissors and white aprons!” said Sharon.  “Of all things you wouldn’t expect!”

Merle stood before the group with a tragic face.

“It’s hard, Father, but she says it’s done.  I suppose—­I suppose we’ll have to make the best of it.”

Hereupon Sharon Whipple’s eyes began to blink rapidly, his jaw dropped, and he slid forward in his chair to writhe in a spasm of what might be weirdly silent laughter.  His face was purple, convulsed, but no sound came from his moving lips.  The others regarded him with alarm.

“Not a stroke?” cried Harvey D., and ran to his side.  As he sought to loosen Sharon’s collar the old man waved him off and became happily vocal.

“Oh, oh!” he gasped.  “That Merle boy has brightened my whole day!”

Merle frowned.

“Perhaps you may see something to laugh at,” he said, icily.

Sharon controlled his seizure.  Pointing his eyebrows severely, he cocked a presumably loaded thumb at Merle.

“Let me tell you, young man, the best this family can make of that marriage will be a darned good best.  Could you think of a better best—­say, now?” Merle turned impatiently from the mocker.

“Blest if I can—­on the spur of the moment!” said Gideon.

Harvey D. looked almost sharply at the exigent Merle.

“Pat’s twenty-five and knows her own mind better than we do,” he said.

“I never knew it at all!” said Gideon.

“It’s almost a distinct relief,” resumed Harvey D.  “As I think of it I like it.”  He went to straighten the painting of an opened watermelon beside a copper kettle, that hung above the sideboard.  “He’s a fine young chap.”  He looked again at Merle, fixing knife and fork in a juster alignment on his plate.  “I dare say we needed him in the family.”

* * * * *

Late the following afternoon Sharon triumphantly brought his car to a stop before the gateway leading up to the red farmhouse.  The front door proving unresponsive, he puffed about to the rear.  He found a perturbed Patricia Cowan, in cap and apron, tidying the big kitchen.  Her he greeted rapturously.