“No! I’m damned if I can!” broke out the Colonel irritably.
“Have you never thought of Philip?”
“Philip!” roared the Colonel. “Impossible!”
“Why?” asked Dan. “You surely know that Philip has got over Eweretta’s loss?”
“Yes, I do know it!” acknowledged the Colonel. “He got over it mighty quickly! But I wouldn’t have him for a son-in-law for anything! Conceited, domineering fellow that he is! Look how he treats his mother and his uncle! He patronizes and snubs them by turns. You don’t mean—you can’t mean that there is anything really in your suggestion?”
“I do, though!” affirmed Dan. “Phyllis—I mean, Miss Lane—is constantly at the bungalow. I think they had a ‘tiff,’ and I think that is at the bottom of the trouble.”
“That decides me to go home at once,” said the Colonel. “Henderson has turned the corner, for the time, at any rate—and you, like a good fellow, will run in and see him sometimes, won’t you? Yes, I must go and put a stop to this infernal business!”
Dan was rather alarmed. He had, without intending it, put a spark to a powder magazine. He hastened to try to smooth matters.
“I ought not to have said what I did; really it is only conjecture on my part. I may be quite wrong. I wouldn’t make a disturbance, if I were you—pardon me for saying it!—till I was very sure.”
“My dear boy, I am going to make very sure. Oh! you don’t know what it is to have a girl like Phyllis to manage—such a born coquette!”