“‘I don’t care,’” mimicked the physician. “You talk like a spoiled kid. Are you going to act like one?”
“I want to get in it! I want to get in it!” cried Jeremy. “Or out of it? Which?”
“Doc, if you were n’t an old friend—”
“You’d punch my nose. I know. You’ll do ’most anything to prove to yourself that you’ll fight ’most anything. Except the enemy that most needs your kind of fighting.”
“I’ve been doing nothing but fight,” said Jeremy wearily.
“And now you want to quit.”
“I’ve had about enough of that word, quit.”
“Somebody else been using it to you? Ugly little whippet of a word, ain’t it! Well, you’re not going to profit by it, at least not with any nice, little, heroic, ready-made excuse to comfort yourself with. That much I’ve just heard over the telephone.”
“Telephone?”
“This one.” He tapped his stethoscope. “Straight from Central. Were you in athletics in college?”