The boy bent forward, and, with painstaking care, selected a blade from a tuft of grass growing between his feet. He nibbled a minute before he spoke again.
"See here, I'm going to tell you something I haven't told a soul. I'm crazy to go to the war. Sometimes it seems as though I couldn't stay home. When Pete's letters come I have to go away somewhere quick and chop wood! Anything to get busy for a while."
"Aren't you too young? Would they take you?"
"Take me? You bet they'd take me! I'm eighteen. Don't I look twenty?"
The girl's eye ran critically over the strong young body, with its long, supple, sinewy lines. "Yes," she nodded. "I think you do."
"They'd take me in a minute, in aviation or anything else."
"Who'd help Father Bob through the farm stunts? Young Bob's gone, and Pete and Sidney. They were always here for the summer work. Henry's a fine lad, but a boy still. Tom's nothing but a boy, though he does his bit. As for the Women's Land Army, it's got up into these parts, but not in force. Father Bob can't hire help: it's not to be had. That's why Mother Jess and the girls are going in so for farm work. They never did it before this year, except in sport. We have more land under cultivation this summer than ever before, and fewer hands to harvest it with. But Mother and the girls sha'n't have to work harder than they're doing now, if I can help it. Could I go off and leave them, after all they've done for me? But that's not it, either--gratitude. They're mine, Father Bob and Mother Jess are, and the rest; they're my folks. You're not exactly grateful to your own folks, you know. They belong to you. And you don't leave what belongs to you in the lurch."
"No," said Elliott. With awakened eyes she was watching Bruce. No boy had ever talked of such things to her before. "So you're not going?"
"Not of my own will. Of course, if the war lasts and I'm drafted, or the help problem lightens up, it will be different. Pete's gone. It was Pete's right to go. He's the elder."
"But you _are_ choosing," Elliott cried earnestly. "Don't you see? You're choosing to stay at home and--" words came swiftly into her memory--"'fight it out on these lines all summer.'"
Bruce's smile showed that he recognized her quotation, but he shook his head. "Choosing? I haven't any choice--except being decent about it. Don't _you_ see I can't go? I can only try to keep from thinking about not going."