“Why can't we fight?” he asked. “I heard something the other day. Roosevelt is going to take a division abroad—older men. I rather like the idea. Wherever he goes there'll be fighting. I'm no Rough Rider, God knows; but I haven't spent a half hour every noon in a gymnasium for the last ten years for nothing. And I can shoot.”
“And you are free,” Clayton observed, quietly.
Nolan looked up.
“It's going to be hard on the women,” he said. “You're all right. They won't let you go. You're too useful where you are. But of course there's the boy.”
When Clayton made no reply Nolan glanced at him again.
“I suppose he'll want to go,” he suggested.
Clayton's face was set. For more than an hour now Graham had been closeted with his mother, and as the time went on, and no slam of a door up-stairs told of his customary method of leaving a room, he had been conscious of a growing uneasiness. The boy was soft; the fiber in him had not been hardened yet, not enough to be proof against tears. He wanted desperately to leave Nolan, to go up and learn what arguments, what coaxing and selfish whimperings Natalie was using with the boy. But he wanted, also desperately, to have the boy fight his own fight and win.
“He will want to go, I think. Of course, his mother will be shaken just now. It'll all new to her. She wouldn't believe it was coming.”
“He'll go,” Nolan said reflectively. “They'll all go, the best of them first. After all, we've been making a lot of noise about wanting to get into the thing. Now we're in, and that's the first price we pay—the boys.”
A door slammed up-stairs, and Clayton heard Graham coming down. He passed the library door, however, and Clayton suddenly realized that he was going out.