rom available Cowans. On the day when he first made the Newbern
course in, approximately, one hundred and twenty--those short-arm iron
shots were beginning to lengthen down the centre of the fairway--he was
sure of it.

* * * * *

It must be said that Sharon was alone in this conviction. The others
most concerned, had he allowed it to be known, would have been amazed by
it--Winona Penniman most of all. Winona's conviction was that the
rejected Cowan twin conspicuously lacked those qualities that would make
him desirable for adoption by any family of note, certainly not by
Whipples. He had gone from bad to worse. Driving a truck had been bad.
There had been something to say in its favour in the early stages of his
career, until the neophyte had actually chosen to wear overalls like any
common driver. In overalls he could not be mistaken for a gentleman
amateur moved by a keen love for the sport of truck driving--and golf
was worse. Glad at first of this change in his life work, Winona had
been shocked to learn that golf kept people from the churches. And the
clothes, even if they did not include overalls, were not genteel. Wilbur
wore belted trousers of no distinction, rubber-soled sneakers of a
neutral tint, and a sweater now so low in tone that the precise
intention of its original shade was no longer to be divined. A rowdyish
cap completed the uniform. No competent bank president, surveying the
ensemble, would have for a moment considered making a bookkeeper out of
the wearer. He was farther than ever before, Winona thought, from a
career of Christian gentility in which garments of a Sabbath grandeur
are worn every day and proper care may be taken of the hands.

It was late in this summer that she enforced briefly a demand for
genteel raiment, and kept the boy up until ten-thirty of a sleepy
evening to manicure his nails. The occasion was nothing less than the
sixteenth birthday of Merle Whipple, to be celebrated by an afternoon
festivity on the grounds of his home. The brothers had met briefly and
casually during Merle's years as a Whipple; but this was to be an affair
of ceremony, and Winona was determined that the unworthy twin should--at
least briefly--appear as one not socially impossible.

She browbeat him into buying a suit such as those that are worn by
jaunty youths in advertisements, including haberdashery of supreme
elegance, the first patent-leather shoes worn by this part