Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/18

 “Wait until you have been sixteen more than two days,” was his father’s answer.

“I could go with the medical unit, I know enough from helping you to be some use as a  hospital orderly,” Hugh begged, “I would do  anything just to go to France.”

“They need men in France, not boys just on the edge of being men,” Dr. Arnold replied,  “when you have had one or two years’ worth of  experience and judgment, then you will be some  help to them over there. But not now.”

“The war will be over by then,” wailed Hugh.

“Don’t fear,” his father observed grimly, “there is going to be enough of it for all of us to  have our share.”

So there the discussion ended and the question of what Hugh was to do came up for settlement. There was a distant cousin of his father’s in New York—but this suggestion was never  allowed to get very far. Hugh had never met the cousin and did not relish the idea of going  to live with him, “sight unseen” as he put it,  on such short notice. It was his own plan to go