"Of course you could; that's why I'm telling you. She's in love with me and she doesn't know it."
"By Jove!" Huntington exclaimed, looking at Merry's beaming face as she walked beside him, and then at the serious features of the boy on the other side. "I'm afraid I can't help, after all."
"Yes, you can," Billy insisted confidently. "Merry will believe anything you tell her. Now if I go to war and get shot up she will realize her destiny, and will come to the hospital over there somewhere and be a Red Cross nurse, and fix me all up. Then we'll be married,—unless my wound is fatal and I die," he added, gulping down the pathos which this painful picture stirred within himself.
"I can't stay with you, Billy, if you harrow up my feelings like this," Huntington declared. "It isn't fair to take advantage of your sympathetic old uncle."
"He's just talking in bunches, Mr. Huntington," Philip said disgustedly. "You mustn't mind what he says. His mouth is full of mush all the time now. I'm sick of it!"
"How about my feelings, Billy?" Merry demanded. "Have you no pity for me?"
"Why should I?" he retorted. "It's all your fault.—Uncle Monty, wouldn't you like to have Merry in the family?"
"I certainly would," was the frank response spoken with a sincerity which gave the boy unbounded encouragement.
"Now you've said something!" Billy exclaimed and he turned to Merry with a gesture of finality! "I want you in the family, Uncle Monty wants you, Phil wants me for a brother-in-law—"
"I'm not so sure," Philip interrupted.