"Yes," I told him, "you must go. It is the right thing for you to do."
He looked at his father and heard from him again the same words, more emphatically repeated: "Yes. It's the right thing for you to do."
He was very silent that evening, but it was very gaily and proudly that he set out next morning to fling himself into the sudden feverish activity of a certain garrison town not far away.
"He won't be long getting his commission," his father said. "His five years in the Officers' Training Corps have taught him his work already."
But at the end of that day, and at the end of many another day that followed, the Boy came back with a wistful disappointment written upon his handsome face.
He always had the same story to tell—a story of having been welcomed and encouraged when he had first presented himself and promised all that his heart desired, so that only he passed the doctor's requirements.
He had laughed at first at the bare idea of meeting with any difficulty in connection with the doctor. Those who had made him the promises had been quite confident, too, on this point. What could there be wrong with a splendid physique such as his?
"And then I failed in the eyesight test," he finished up. "It is ridiculous, of course, that they should reject me for so little, because I don't have to wear glasses now for anything, and no ordinary person would know there was anything wrong with my eyes at all. I wonder if this sort of thing is going to keep on repeating itself? One or two of the officers suggested another doctor, but I suppose that as long as that wretched test board is put up and they find I can't read the small type on it at a given distance, one doctor will be the same as another."
He was walking up and down the room restlessly. His fine dark eyes—so much too beautiful to have an eagle's sight—were sadder than ever in their wistful mortification.
"You poor boy! You've always had everything so much your own way in life that you can't understand being beaten back anywhere. But, you know, you always say that you've never got anything important yet the very first time you've tried for it."