For us, news came quickly. But it was not a letter from John that
came to us. It was a telegram from the war office and it told us no
more than that our boy was wounded and in hospital.



CHAPTER VI

"Wounded and in hospital!"

That might have meant anything. And for a whole week that was all we
knew. To hope for word more definite until--and unless--John himself
could send us a message, appeared to be hopeless. Every effort we
made ended in failure. And, indeed, at such a time, private inquiries
could not well be made. The messages that had to do with the war and
with the business of the armies had to be dealt with first.

But at last, after a week in which his mother and I almost went mad
with anxiety, there came a note from our laddie himself. He told us
not to fret--that all that ailed him was that his nose was split and
his wrist bashed up a bit! His mother looked at me and I at her. It
seemed bad enough to us! But he made light of his wounds--aye, and he
was right! When I thought of men I'd seen in hospitals--men with
wounds so frightful that they may not be told of--I rejoiced that
John had fared so well.

And I hoped, too, that his wounds would bring him home to us--to
Blighty, as the Tommies were beginning to call Britain. But his
wounds were not serious enough for that and so soon as they were