Hoofy said he'd got to enlist, in spite of his mother. He knew it was his duty, but he'd rather be shot than go home and go through the farewells. He knew his mother would be sick in bed about it, and she'd cling round his neck and cry on his shoulder, and he'd have to loosen her arms and go off leaving her feeling like that. And his father would look grave and tell him not to mind, that his mother wasn't well, and that she couldn't help it--and Hoofy really didn't think she could, being made that way. Just the same, he dreaded going home to say good-bye--dreaded it so much he felt like flunking it and wiring he couldn't come. I told him he mustn't do that--that his mother would never forgive him, and that he'd have to put on a stiff upper lip and go through with it. And Hoofy owned that that was the thing he was really afraid of--that his upper lip wouldn't keep stiff but would wobble, in spite of him. And of course a breakdown on his own part would be the worst possible thing that could happen to him. No potential soldier wants to feel his upper lip unreliable, no matter what happens. It's likely to make him flinch in a critical moment, when flinching won't do. I was looking up at a picture of Mother on the wall over my desk as I advised him to go home, and he asked me suddenly what _my_ mother wrote back when I told her. I hated to tell him, but he pushed me about it, so I finally got out her letter and read him the last paragraph--but one. Of course the last one I wouldn't have read to anybody. "It's all right, Son, and we're proud as Punch of you, that you want to be not only in America's '_First Hundred Thousand_,' but in her '_First Ten Thousand_.' We know it will stiffen your spine considerably to hear that your family are behind you. Well, we are--just ranks and rows of us, with our heads up and the colours waving. Even Grandfather and Grandmother are as gallant as veterans about it. So go ahead--but come home first, if you can. You needn't fear we shall make it hard for you--not we. We may offer you a good deal of jelly, in our enthusiasm for you, but you could always stand a good deal of jelly, you know, so there's no danger of our making a jelly-fish of you--which wouldn't do, in the circumstances. That's rather a poor joke, but I'll try to make a better one for you to laugh at when you come. When shall we expect you? No--we won't have the village band out, and will try not to look as if we had a hero in our midst, but we shall be awfully glad to see Jack just the same."