[212]

"By God, no!" said Hinchcliffe. "'Pervyse' shall have his chance, the best chance a kid ever had. I've got to get back to America. There'll be a smash if I don't. I'm a month late on the job, as it is. But 'Pervyse' goes with me. Little Belgium is going to get his chance."

"You mean—" said Hilda.

"Certainly, I do," replied the banker. "I mean that we're going to bring that kid up as good as if war was a dream. We're going to make him glad he's alive. He's going back to America with me. Will you come?"

"Why," said Hilda, her eyes filling, "what do you mean?"

"I mean that I need you. Show me how to put this thing, that we've been doing here, into New York. It's a dif[213]ferent world after the war. You have often said it. America mustn't be behind. I want to catch up with these Red Cross chauffeurs. I want our crowd in Wall Street to be in on the fun. Come on and help."

[213]

"I don't know what to say," began Hilda. "I shall miss you so. The boys in the ward will miss you, the babies will miss you." She laughed. "I can't come just now. There is so much work, and worse ahead."

"Later, you will come?" he pleaded. He turned to the child who was wielding his bottle as a hammer on the foot of the bed, and lifted him shoulder high.

"Remember," he said, as the bottle was thumped on his head, "'Pervyse' and I will be waiting."

The bottle fell on the floor, and the outraged glass splintered, and "Pervyse's" supper went trickling down the cracks.

"You see," said the banker, "we are helpless without you."

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

 Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and inconsistent hyphenation. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the like) have been corrected. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below:

 page 49: added quote of it," objected Barkleigh. ["]When the danger is so close you can see it,

page 63: typo corrected inch. So the little 

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