Book Two Josh Roden Conway Chapter 11

Sutton sighed and got up and left them. John waited for the closing of the door.

"Does it strike you," he said, "that Billy isn't very keen?"

"No. It doesn't. What do you mean?"

"I notice that he's jolly glad when he can get an indoor job."

"That's because they're short of surgeons. He only wants to do what's most useful."

"I didn't say he had cold feet."

"Of course he hasn't. Billy would go to Antwerp like a shot if they'd let him. He feels just as we do about it. That's why he got up and went away."

"He'd go. But he wouldn't enjoy it."

"Oh, don't talk about 'enjoying.'"

"Sharlie, you don't mean to say that you're not keen?"

"No. It's only that I don't care as much as I did about what you call the romance of it; and I do care more about the solid work. It seems to me that it doesn't matter who does it so long as it's done."

"I'd very much rather I did it than McClane. So would you."

"Yes. I would. But I'd be sorry if poor little Mac didn't get any of it. And all the time I know it doesn't matter which of us it is. It doesn't matter whether we're in danger or out of danger, or whether we're in the big thing or a little one."