"Yes, dear, I'm quite sure of it," which always satisfied him that he had
her attention. But now, she sat looking out the window and thinking, a
perplexed expression on her face. It had not altogether been her desire
that the coming child should be a boy, although not one word had she
breathed of this to Dean Peabody. Their lives had run in tranquil grooves.
Everything about their daily routine was as St. Paul suggested, "Decently
and in order."

The determination to take one of the Greenacre brood had been a sudden
one. The Dean had been reading somebody's theory about the obligations of
age to youth.

"Daphne, my dear," he had remarked one evening, as the two sat quietly in
the old library, "we have been leading very narrow, selfish lives, and we
will suffer for it as we grow older. We have shut ourselves away from
youth. I am seventy-four now, and what heritage am I leaving to the world
beyond a few books of reference, and my collections? What I should do is
to take some child, still in the impressionable stage, and impart to it
all I know."

Miss Daphne glanced up with a little amused twinkle in her eyes.

"But, brother, what about the child? Surely you would require an
exceptional child for such an experiment. One who would have the mentality
to grasp all that you were trying to impart to it."

The Dean cogitated over this, pursing his lips and tapping his knuckles
with his rimless eye-glasses.

"Possibly," he granted, "and yet, Daphne, surely there would be far more