"You strike me as not being quite up to the mark," he said.
"Do I?" Dick grinned. "You've been talking to Elsie!"
"I have; and I'm sorry to hear the doctors didn't think you very well. Hadn't you better tell me about it?"
"I suppose I must. You're a persistent fellow, but you don't often take the superior moral tone. Well, as I'd been in the officers' training corps, I applied for a commission, and they sent me up to a medical board. One doctor asked me some catchy questions, and, being quite inexperienced, I fell into the trap. The consequence was I didn't pass."
"You didn't learn much about yourself from him?"
"Not much! It was he who got the information. But when he'd finished he offered me a scrap of advice—I'd better see a private doctor at once."
"Did you?"
Dick chuckled.
"Instead, I went up to London and tried to join one of the special battalions. I was wiser this time, and told their medical examiner nothing I could help. I thought I'd made a good impression; but at last he looked at me pretty hard. 'I admire your keenness, but you won't do,' he said. I told him I was a bit off color, but I'd play golf all day and drink nothing but soda-water, and then come back to him in a month. 'It would be of no use; I'd go to Harley Street now,' he said."
"I hope you did," Andrew remarked with a frown.