"Better ask Billy; and keep him in, and talk to him--I really would like you to talk to him.

He admires you so much.

I wish--in fact I hope you will ask Billy to come and live with us," he added half abstractedly.

He was trying to see his way through a sudden confusion of ideas.

Confusion was rare to him, and his senses, feeling the fog, embarrassed by a sudden air of mystery and a cloud of futurity, were creeping to a mind-path of understanding.
"Don't be absurd," she said coldly.