one night in the library
of the Whipple New Place. It was agreed that the last number of the
_New Dawn_ went pretty far--farther than any Whipple ought to go. But it
was not felt that the time had come for extreme measures. It was
believed that the newest Whipple should merely be reasoned with. To this
end they began to reason among themselves, and were presently wrangling.
It developed that Sharon's idea of reasoning lacked subtlety. It
developed that Gideon and Harvey D. reasoned themselves into sheer
bewilderment in an effort to find reasons that would commend themselves
to Merle; so that this first meeting of the conspirators was about to
break up fruitlessly, when Sharon Whipple was inspired to a suggestion
that repelled yet pricked the other two until they desperately yielded
to it. This was that none other than Dave Cowan be called into
consultation.

"He'll know more about his own son than we do," urged Sharon.

Harvey D.'s feeling of true fatherhood was irritated by this way of
putting it, but in the end he succumbed. He felt that his son was now
far removed from the sphere of Dave Cowan, yet the man might retain some
influence over the boy that would be of benefit to all concerned.

"He's in town," said Sharon. "He's a world romper, but he's here now. I
heard him to-day in the post office telling someone how many stars there
are in the sky--or something like that."

The following afternoon Dave Cowan, busy at the typesetting machine of
the Newbern _Advance_, Daily and Weekly, was again begged to meet a few
Whipples in the dingy little office of the First National. The office
was unchanged; it had kept through the years since Dave had last
illumined its gloom an air of subdued, moneyed discretion. Nor had the
Whipples changed much. Harvey D. was still neat-faced and careful of
attire, still solicitous of many little things. Gideon, gaunt and dour,
was still erect. His hair was white now, but the brows shot their
questioning glance straight. Sharon was as he had been, round-chested,
plump; perhaps a trifle readier to point the ends of the grizzled brows
in choleric amaze. The Whipple nose on all three still jutted forward
boldly. It was a nose never to compromise with Time.

Dave Cowan, at first glance, was much the same, even after he had
concealed beneath the table that half of him which was never quite so
scrupulously arrayed as the other. But a second glance revealed that the
yellow hair was less abunda