"That's because you can't marry Merry,—she's your sister."
"I don't make any exceptions,—Merry's just a girl, like the rest of them."
"You don't appreciate her, that's all."
"Oh, Merry is all right, of course. She and I have always been good pals, and we've played together like two boys. She'd make any one a good wife if he didn't mind being bossed."
Huntington listened to the tilt between the boys with amusement, and yet with a real feeling of envy. What riches these youths possessed with life all before them, its mysteries still unexplained, its illusions still unshattered!
"I thought your sister the finest girl I ever met," he said to Philip, curious to see what response the boy would make.
"Oh, she wouldn't show that side to you," Philip replied; "it's only with people her own age."
Huntington winced. There it was again, and again he had brought it upon himself! To these boys he seemed an antique fossil of humanity, entitled to respect and veneration! He must appear the same to her. "People of her own age,"—of course, that was the natural thing as it would appear to any one. Again he cursed himself inwardly for being fool enough deliberately to open up the wound.
Billy was delighted to hear his uncle's comment on the girl, and beamed contentedly.
"You see, Phil," he said, "even Uncle Monty noticed what a corker she is, and usually he never looks at a girl twice. Uncle Monty is a cynic on marriage, a woman-hater and all that sort of thing. Yet even he noticed Merry."