"A healthy emotion is not excitement," said Mr. Brougham. "But you have been cold, absolutely cold to the horror of the world's bleeding to death, to all this unnatural disaster that has come upon us." "It doesn't seem exactly unnatural to me," answered the boy slowly. "At least I've got used to it. You see, sir, ever since I knew anything--ever since I was Lawrence's age--war has been about the most natural thing going. I suppose it's very different for all of you. Coming at the end of a perfectly peaceful life, it must seem like a sort of dirty accident; but even so, it's awfully queer to me the way you and mother have to lash yourselves up to doing anything--" "Lash ourselves up?" exclaimed Mr. Brougham. "Yes, with the idea of patriotism and self-sacrifice, when it's so perfectly clear what we all have to do. Why, father, I feel just as if I were a policeman, or, no, a fireman--I feel as if I were a fireman and you expected me to get off something about patriotism and self-sacrifice every time I went to put out a fire. A fireman goes, all right--it's his job; but I dare say he often wishes he could stay in bed. No one says his heart is cold, and no more it is, to my mind. It must be fun to go off in a burst of patriotic enthusiasm. I know, for I've often felt like that about football. But this is different. This isn't a sport--it's a long disagreeable job. And I must say, father, it makes me pretty tired to have you think me a slacker because I don't get, and don't want to get, excited about it." "You misunderstand me," said his father. "I don't think any man a slacker who waits to think it over before he makes the supreme sacrifice and offers"--Mr. Brougham's voice took a deeper note--"his life." David turned sharply to Granby. "There," he said, "that's what I hate! I hate that attitude toward death--as if it were something you couldn't speak of in the drawing-room. Death isn't so bad," he added, as if saying what he could for an absent friend. With this Mr. Brougham couldn't even pretend to agree; death seemed to him very bad indeed--about the worst possible, though not to be evaded by brave men on that account. "Ah," he said to Granby, "that's the beauty of youth--it doesn't think about death at all."