an
expertly fitted frock coat of black, gray trousers faintly striped, a
pearl-gray cravat skewered by a pear-headed pin, and his small feet were
incased in shoes of patent leather. He was arrayed as befitted a Whipple
who had become a banker.

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.