He affected not to notice the growing coldness in her replies. "Take me with you in the Ambulance Corps."
"You're neither soldier, doctor, nor mechanic."
"Neither are you."
"I happen to be fitted to a job. There are plenty that will fit you, without butting into the wrong place."
"I wanted us to work together," he reiterated stubbornly.
"Why encumber our separate usefulness by insisting on our private preference to be useful hand-in-hand?"
"If it were your private preference—it isn't! You're glad to be dashing off without me."
"I'm glad of this chance to go with the Corps!" Patricia sprang upright, and flung up her arms behind her head.... He could not refrain from the thought of how triumphantly nature had equipped her for any strenuous job she might care to undertake; how little likely that she would bungle it; how untiring her limbs; how swift to any adjustment the poised equilibrium of her mind. Nor would any hitch occur in the plans of Ferguson's Ambulance Corps, robbing her of the forthcoming rampant opportunities to—to show off. No hitch—where Pat was concerned. It was fate. She would go. And she would excel.
"You might have waited for me before you settled anything;" he spoke plaintively as a child who sees another child off to a party. "I suppose you think I'm not in earnest when I tell you I want to help. I've thought of nothing else."
"Your meditations do you credit, my lad."