"Guess it's a big proposition," said Jake. "But you've got spunk for anything. I'm going to send him a letter right away. Maud views the matter as we do. She says, the sooner the better."
"Whatever made her say that?" said Bunny curiously.
"She was thinking of you," said Jake. "She thinks more of you than of anyone else in the world. Reckon you owe her a mighty lot, Bunny. Ever thought of that?"
"Reckon she'd be rather lost without me," said Bunny perversely.
"Not for long," said Jake.
"She would," persisted Bunny. "If I were to get well, she'd be glad for my sake, but she'd be utterly miserable for her own."
He spoke with the shrewdness that years of passive observation had wrought in him--a shrewdness that somehow lifted him above the plane of ordinary unthinking boyhood. Almost instinctively Jake responded to it. He spoke to Bunny as though he had been a man.
"She won't be miserable when she has children of her own to look after," he said. "That's what she wants, and what I want too. They'll make all the difference in the world to her."
Bunny was momentarily surprised. This was a possibility that had not occurred to him. "Oh, that's the idea, is it?" he said.
"What's the matter with it?" said Jake.