"Of course she knows. You aren't going to try to stop me, Mother?"
"No," she said. "I'm not going to try to stop you--this time."
She thought: "If I hadn't stopped him seven years ago, he would be safe now, with the Army in India."
One by one they got up and said "Good night" to each other.
But Nicholas came to Michael in his room.
He said to him: "I say, Mick, don't you worry about not enlisting. At any rate, not yet. Don't worry about Don and Daddy. They won't take Don because he's got a mitral murmur in his heart that he doesn't know about. He's going to be jolly well sold, poor chap. And they won't take the guv'nor because he's too old; though the dear old thing thinks he can bluff them into it because he doesn't look it.
"And look here--don't worry about me. As far as I'm concerned, the War's a blessing in disguise. I always wanted to go into the Army. You know how I loathed it when they went and stopped me. Now I'm going in and nobody--not even mother--really wants to keep me out. Soon they'll all be as pleased as Punch about it.
"And I sort of know how you feel about the War. You don't want to stick bayonets into German tummies, just because they're so large and oodgy. You'd think of that first and all the time and afterwards. And I shan't think of it at all.
"Besides, you disapprove of the War for all sorts of reasons that I can't get hold of. But it's like this--you couldn't respect yourself if you went into it; and I couldn't respect myself if I stayed out."
"I wonder," Michael said, "if you really see it."