"Why don't you ask me?" Billy demanded. "Why go out of the family?"
"You may come into it later, but I want his first impressions to be favorable."
"Stung!" Billy cried, laughing. "But I don't care. I don't care what happens now, for Phil has asked me to spend the Easter recess with him in New York, and I shall see Merry again."
"So it is still 'Merry,' is it?" Huntington asked, looking at him with an expression which any one other than a boy would have noticed. "By this time I thought there might have been a dozen others."
"Merry is still the one best bet," Billy insisted. "Phil here doesn't know what a cinch it is to have a sister like that."
"I believe it's because of Merry that you like me," Phil declared, half seriously.
"Well," Billy said guardedly, "it may have been the fact that you were her brother that first attracted me—"
"Why, you never saw her until we'd known each other several months—"
"We were acquainted before that," was the admission; "but I really came to know you after you introduced me to her. That, Phil, was the best thing you ever did. It was after I met Merry that I discovered that you were the finest old scout in the world."
"You make me tired!" Philip answered disgustedly. "I never saw any one so crazy over a girl. There are lots of other things in the world, Billy, besides girls. I'd hate to think of getting engaged up and having to train around with just one girl all my life."