Miss Daphne had a little way of appearing to listen while her brother expatiated on any of his favorite topics.  It had grown to be a loving habit with her, and she had a way of answering absently.

“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 credit attached to planting the seed of knowledge where it needed much cultivating.  It has surprised and amazed me up at the college to find that usually the children who appreciate an education are the farmer boys, and very often the foreign element.”

Miss Daphne rocked to and fro gently.  She knew her brother well enough to understand that this had become a fixed idea with him, and the easiest way out was to find him an impressionable child.  And then, it happened that she thought of Elizabeth Ann Robbins, their niece, and all her nestful of young mouths to be satisfied with life’s gifts and privileges.  She remembered having one letter after the breaking up of the home on Long Island.  This had told them of Mr. Robbins’ illness and breakdown.  But with the optimism that was inherent in every one of the family, there had been no appeal for aid or cry of despondency over the sudden change in their fortunes.

Several times the Dean had written to Mr. Robbins but always on archaeological topics.  Some little point of controversy upon which he desired confirmation.  Somehow material needs never seemed to suggest themselves to the Dean.  Blessed with absolute self-reliance from his boyhood, he had educated and made a success of himself, and he could not understand how any one could falter or repine in the race.  Particularly, if Nature had granted them any precious ratio of Peabody blood.