"Mrs. Rowley thinks it's all perfectly splendid. She hasn't the least doubt about anything. She knows the uncle of a man whose cousin is in the War Office and often sees Lord Kitchener in the corridors, and he's quite certain——"
"Who? Lord Kitchener?"
"No, the uncle of the man whose cousin—he's quite certain the War will be over in our favour before next June, because there'll be a revolution in Potsdam and thousands of Germans are being killed in bread-riots every day, and lots of stuff of that sort."
"I understand," I said. "You began to react against it."
"Something of that kind. She was so terribly serene and so dreadfully over-confident that I got contradictious and had to argue with her—simply couldn't restrain myself—and then she said she was sorry I was such a pessimist, and I said I wasn't, and here I am."
"Yes," I said, "you are, and in a state of Cimmerian gloom, naturally enough. But you've come to the right place—no, by Jove, now that I think of it you've come to the wrong place, the very wrongest place in the world."
"How's that?"
"Because I met old Captain Burstall out walking, and he was miserable about everything. According to him we haven't got a dog's chance anywhere. The Government's rotten, the Army's rotten, the Navy's worse and the British Empire's going to be smashed up before Easter."
"Captain Burstall's the man for my money. If I'd only met him I should have been as cheerful as a lark."
"And that," I said, "is exactly what I am, entirely owing to a natural spirit of contradiction. I just pulled myself together and countered him on every point."