Edith Visits Candy in Hospital, Explained：double or quits

What's really going on

Under the hospital routine, the scene is really about two people beginning to like each other. The cover story — Candy's wound is a "hunting accident" — protects his family and the story, but the visit is full of private jokes, and the ward keeps interrupting them: a bell at five, a nurse tidying things away. Much of the humour is national. A German officer would shave off his moustache to show a scar; British officers, Candy claims, simply grow bigger ones and joke their way through: "My dear Miss Hunter, soldiers cause military incidents. They leave diplomacy to the diplomats." Even the card game at the end, with its "double or quits," is courtship in disguise, a way of being close without saying so.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• Find me out means you see through my act.
• On the whole softens a blunt verdict.
• Care to invites without sounding like an order.
• The banter hides two men sizing each other up.

発音のポイント

• got you into — Run got you together as one sound.
• so much as a — Blur much as a into one weak run.
• won't you — Link won't and you; let the tag rise.
• Toss you — Glide toss into you without a pause.