"Well, that's it; and I won't have it."
"Of course you won't; but how are you going to stop it?"
"That's your job, Monty. It's up to you to send him about his business."
"That doesn't appeal to me as a sporting proposition," Huntington said after a moment's deliberation. "I didn't come down here to help you get a corner in anything, but merely as an observer, and to give you expert advice. Now you suggest a combination—trust, as it were—of two full-grown men against a half-baked boy. It isn't worthy of you, Connie, and I'm not sure that it isn't an illegal restraint of trade. Oh, no; I couldn't think of it."
"I'd like to see you in the same situation just once," growled Cosden. "Why the devil can't you send the boy home?"
"If I did, he'd come back so quick he'd meet himself going away," Huntington said gravely; "but as a matter of fact I understand that he plans to go on Monday, and there's no boat sailing before then anyhow."
He opened the door of his room and stepped inside.
"I might add, Connie," he continued, "that if you're afraid to take chances with a boy like that I don't feel much confidence in the final outcome of your benedictine expedition."
"I'm serious in this," Cosden snapped back. "My bump of humor evidently got light-struck in the developing. Billy has twenty years ahead of him to pick out a girl while I haven't, and he must understand that I mean business."
"Of course he must," agreed Huntington. "It hadn't occurred to me until you spoke of it that there was the remotest chance of having Billy show sense enough to become interested in any girl so well calculated to make a man of him. In fact, I doubt very much whether his own intellect has carried him so far. It's all right for you or me to contemplate committing matrimony, but a young man, in these days of increasing cost of everything, is likely to become a grandfather before he can afford to be a father. Only the other day, Connie, the thought came to me that if this high cost of living continues it will make death a necessity of life."