Harvey D.Whipple was proud of his new son; had already come to feel a real fatherhood for him, and could deny him nothing.

He was such a son as Harvey D.had hoped to have.

Old Gideon Whipple, too, was proud of his new grandson.

The stepmother, for whom Fate had been circumvented by this device of adoption, looked up to the boy and rejoiced in her roundabout motherhood, and Miss Murtree declared that he was a perfect little gentleman.

Also, by her account, he was studious, with a natural fondness for the best in literature, and betrayed signs of an intellect such as, in her confidentially imparted opinion, the Whipple family, neither in root nor branch, had yet revealed.