"I wonder if he'll enlist," said Roy interestedly. "It's kind of hard to picture old Percy washing his own dishes."
"Enlist!" snorted Frank. "Of course he won't. He'll wait till he's drafted, and then pray every night that he'll be sick or something, so he won't have to go. I know his kind."
"Oh, there'll probably be a lot that will try to dodge the draft by dropping hammers on their toes, and cutting off their fingers and all such clever and noble little things as that," said Allen.
"Oh, Allen, do you think so?" asked Amy, gazing at him with horrified eyes over her knitting.
"Why, of course," Roy backed him up. "It won't happen so much among our boys. The slum districts will get most of it. Some of those suckers would do almost anything to get out of fighting."
"Goodness," said Betty, with a little shiver. "I should think it would take lots more courage to hurt yourself than to take a chance on getting shot in the trenches. I don't see how anybody can do it."
"Oh, they're doing worse things than that," said Allen with a chuckle. "Hundreds of the scared ones are getting married in the hope that they can get out of it that way."
"Jumping from the frying pan into the fire," grinned Roy.
"Or from one war to another," added Frank, while the girls made faces at them.
"But isn't Congress going to pass some sort of law," asked Betty earnestly—Allen reflected how very pretty she was when in earnest—"that will make that kind of man serve first? It seems to me I read something about it in the paper."