"Bad news that about Mrs. Lummis," he said, looking towards the cottage on the other side of the road.
"What is that?" said I. "Her son?" There had been no news of him for two months.
"Yes, poor Jack. She's got news that he was killed near la Bassée in June.
Nice feller—and her only son."
Then, more cheerfully, he added, "Jim's coming home to-morrow. Going to get his officer's rig out, you know, and have a rest—the first since he went out a year ago."
"You'll be glad to see him," said I.
"Not half," said he with a vast smile.
ON RUMOUR
I was speaking the other day to a man of cautious mind on a subject of current rumour. "Well," he said, "if I had been asked whether I believed such evidence four months ago I should have said 'Certainly.' But after the great Russian myth I believe nothing that I can't prove. I believed in that army of ghosts that came from Archangel! There are people who say they didn't believe in it. Some of them believe they didn't believe in it. But I say defiantly that I did believe in it. And I say further that there was never a rumour in the world that seemed based upon more various or more convincing evidence. And it wasn't true…. Well, I find I'm a changed man. I find I am no longer a believer: I am a doubter."
This experience, I suppose, is not uncommon. The man who believes as easily to-day as he did six months ago is a man on whom lessons are thrown away. We have lived in a world of gigantic whispers, and most of them have been false whispers. Even the magic word "Official" leaves one cold. It is not what I am "officially" told that interests me: it is what I am "officially" not told that I want to know in order to arrive at the truth.
You remember that famous answer of the plaintiff in an action against a London paper years ago. "What did you tell him?" "I told him to tell the truth." "The whole truth?" "No, selected truths."