Gideon, his father, achieved something of a dapper effect in an old-fashioned manner, but no observer would have read him for a banker; while Sharon, even on a Sunday evening, in loose tweeds and stout boots, was but a country gentleman who thought little about dress, so that one would not have guessed him a banker—­rather the sort that makes banking a career of profit.

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 scrap 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.”