Cars shot this way and that like hurrying meteors. Often they could see that officers of rank occupied them. For all they knew the boys may have been looking on the King of the Belgians himself, though it was more probable that Albert kept much closer to the firing line while his men were sacrificing themselves for the national honor.
“Honest to goodness!” Giraffe was heard saying as they surveyed all these interesting sights, turning their heads constantly from side to side like boys in a “three-ringed” circus. “I kind-a hate to get away from here while things are booming this way. It’s a chance in a life-time to see what war means. I seem to feel something strange stirring within me every time I think of how these brave Belgians are trying to hold the Kaiser’s terrible military machine in check, and somehow I imagine it may be hero-worship that ails me.”
“Huh!” grunted the more practical Bumpus, “more’n likely it’s that cucumber salad you had aboard the steamer for supper last night. It gave me a few spasms myself, and you know I’m nearly fool-proof.”
“Well, there’s the Sanitarium ahead of us,” suggested Thad just then, and of course Bumpus had nothing more to say; though his face again assumed that anxious expression so foreign to its usually calm and satisfied condition.
Holding the vehicle at their service, the four boys hastened to enter the grounds of the big and famous institution. Somehow it struck Thad as though there was lacking considerable of the bustle he had noticed when there before. He fell to wondering what that sign could mean, and if poor Bumpus was to have a bitter disappointment after all his trouble.
Gaining the office they found that instead of the pompous individual whom they had met before, a rather obscure-looking party now held forth, undoubtedly a subordinate. Bumpus hastened to push forward, and they saw him talking with this party, who evidently was able to comprehend and speak English. Indeed, many of the patients came from foreign parts, even distant America, so it was only natural that those in charge must be linguists.
Bumpus looked as though far from happy, Thad noticed. The official, after satisfying himself that the stout, red-cheeked boy was the party he claimed to be, had produced a letter, which he handed over. This Bumpus had opened with trembling hands and was seen to devour greedily.
“There’s something gone wrong, take it from me,” remarked Giraffe, as they saw the other starting toward them, still gripping his letter and looking pretty pale. “What’s hit you, Bumpus?” he continued, not coldly, but really with a touch of brotherly sympathy in his voice.
“Oh! what do you think!” exclaimed Bumpus, bitterly; “my mother has gone to Paris with the head doctor, most of the staff and some of the patients, and she wants me to join her there.”