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.

The messenger, Julius Farrow, a bookkeeper, could answer no questions.
He knew only that Harvey D. had been very polite about it, and if Dave
couldn't find it convenient to-day he was to say when he might find it
convenient to have a conference. Dave felt relieved at hearing the word
"conference." A mere summons to a strange place like a bank might be
sinister, but a polite invitation to a conference at his convenience was
different. He put down his half-filled stick. He had been at work on the
_Advance_ locals for the Wednesday paper, two and three-line items to
tell of the trivial going and coming of nobodies which he was wont to
set up with an accompaniment of satirical comment on small-town
activities. He had broken off in the midst of perpetuating in brevier
type the circumstance that Adelia May Simsbury was home from normal
school over Sunday to visit her par