"Give Merle another bit of the steak, Mother," urged Judge Penniman.
The judge had begun to dwell upon his own new importance. This thing made him by law a connection of the Whipple family, didn't it? He, Rufus Tyler Penniman, had become at least a partial Whipple. He reflected pleasantly upon the consequences.
"Will he go home to-night?" suddenly demanded the Wilbur twin, pointing at his brother so there should be no mistake. The Merle twin seemed already a stranger to him.
"Not to-night, dear, but in a few days, I would suppose." It sent Mrs. Penniman to the stove again.
"I don't just know when I will go," said the Merle twin, surveying a replenished plate. "But I guess I'll give you back that knife you bought me; I probably won't need it up there. I'll probably have plenty of better knives than that knife."
The Wilbur twin questioned this, but hid his doubt. Surely there could be few better knives in the whole world than one with a thing to dig stones out of horses' feet. Anyway, he would be glad to have it, and was glad the promise had been made before witnesses.
After supper on the porch Dave Cowan in the hammock picked chords and scraps of melody from his guitar, quite as if nothing had happened. Judge Penniman, in his wicker chair, continued to muse upon certain pleasant contingencies of this new situation. It had occurred to him that Dave Cowan himself would be even more a Whipple than any Penniman, and would enjoy superior advantages inevitably rising from this circumstance.
"That family will naturally want to do something for you, too, Dave," he said at last.
"Do something for me?" Dave's fingers hung waiting above the strings.
"Why not? You're the boy's father, ain't you? Facts is facts, no matter what the law says. You're his absolute progenitor, ain't you? Well, you living here in the same town, they'll naturally want you to be somebody, won't they?"