an enlightened young man. What I can't tell you Juliana
can. I got a dozen tractors out of commission right now. Couldn't get
any one to put 'em in shape. None of them dissipated noblemen round the
Mansion garage would look at a common tractor. You'll start on them.
You're fixed--don't tell me no!"

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

"You done your bit in a fighting war; now you'll serve in a peaceful
one. I don't know what the good Lord intends to come out of all this
rumpus, but I do know the world's going to need food. We'll raise it."

"Yes, sir."

Sharon glanced shrewdly at him sidewise.

"You're a better Whipple than any one else of your name ever got to be."

"He didn't understand; he was misled or something."

"Or something," echoed Sharon. "Listen! There's one little job you got
to do before you hole up out here. You heard about him, of course--the
worry he's been to poor Harvey and the rest. Well, he's down there in
New York still acting squeamishy. I want you should go down and put the
fear of God into him."

"I understand he's mixed up with a lot of reds down there."

"Red! Him? Humph!" Sharon here named an equally well-known primary
colour--not red. Wilbur protested.

"You don't get him," persisted the old man. "Listen, now! He cast off
the family like your father said he would. Couldn't accept another cent
of Whipple money. Going to work with his bare hands. Dressed up for it
like a hunter in one of these powder advertisements. All he needed was a
shotgun and a setter dog with his tail up. And everybody in the house
worried he'd starve to death. Of course no one thought he'd work--that
was one of his threats they didn't take seriously. But they promised to
sit tight, each and all, and bring him to time the sooner.

"Well, he didn't come to time. We learned he was getting money from some
place. He still had it. So I begun to get my suspicions up. Last night I
got the bunch together, Gid and Harvey D. and Ella and Juliana, and I
taxed 'em with duplicity, and every last one of 'em was guilty as
paint--every goshed last one! Every one sending him fat checks
unbeknownst to the others. Even Juliana! I never did suspect her. 'I did
it because it's all a romance to him,' says she. 'I wanted him to go his
way, whatever it was, and find it bright.'

"Wha'd you think of that from a girl of forty-eight or so that can
tinker a mowing machine as good as you can? I ask you! Of course I'd
suspected the rest. A set of