"I don't want to go back to college."

"What do you want to do?"

"Join the Canadian forces. It makes me sick to have a war going on and
me not in it. Dad quit college for West Point and everybody thought it
was all right. I don't see why I shouldn't get into it. I wouldn't fall
down on that. I promise you. I'd make you proud of me instead of ashamed
the way you are now." The boy's voice and eyes were unusually earnest.

His uncle did not answer instantly. He knew that there was some truth in
his nephew's analysis of the situation. It was his uneasy, superabundant
energy and craving for action that made him find the more or less
restricted life of the college, a burden, a bore and an exasperation, and
drove him to crazy escapades and deeds of flagrant lawlessness. He needed
no assurance that the boy would not "fall down" at soldiering. He would
take to it as a duck to water. And the discipline might be the making of
him, prove the way to exorcise the devil. Still there were other
considerations which to him seemed paramount for the time at least.

"I understand how you feel, Ted," he said at last. "If we get into the
war ourselves I won't say a word against your going. I should expect you
to go. We all would. But in the meantime as I see it you are not quite a
free agent. Granny is old and very, very feeble. She hasn't gotten over
your father's death. She grieves over it still. If you went to war I
think it would kill her. She couldn't bear the strain and anxiety.
Patience, laddie. You don't want to hurt her, do you?"

"I s'pose not," said Ted a little grudgingly. "Then it is no,