"Something clean and manly about him," said Harvey D. "I should like him—like him for my son."
"Has it occurred to either of you," asked Gideon, "that this absurd father will have to be consulted in such a matter?"
"But naturally!" said Harvey D. "An arrangement would have to be made with him."
"But has it occurred to you," persisted Gideon, "that he might be absurd enough not to want one of his children taken over by strangers?"
"Strangers?" said Harvey D. in mild surprise, as if Whipples could with any justice be thus described.
Gideon, however, was able to reason upon this.
"He might seem both at first, I dare say; but we can make plain to him 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."
"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.