"Now," Mr. Belknap continued, taking advantage of his silence, "my counter-proposition is that you should go to Brazil for three months with your Uncle Tom Jarvice, who is being sent down there on a big engineering job. It's a wonderful opportunity to see the country—see it like a prince too, for he'll have a special train at his disposal. Then, when you come back," he continued, his voice weakening a little under the strain of Troy's visible inattention, "we'll see...."
"See what?"
"Well—I don't know ... a camp ... till it's time for Harvard...."
"I want to go to France at once, father," said Troy, with the voice of a man.
"To do what?" wailed his mother.
"Oh, any old thing—drive an ambulance," Troy struck out at random.
"But, dearest," she protested, "you could never even learn to drive a Ford runabout!"
"That's only because it never interested me."
"But one of those huge ambulances—you'll be killed!"
"Father!" exclaimed Troy, in a tone that seemed to say: "Aren't we out of the nursery, at least?"