“First, what about yourselves—from what Giraffe flung at me as he was starting off again I reckon you’ve got some plan or other afoot, and that it’s connected with this same field-hospital work.”
“Oh! well, that’s about the size of it,” returned Allan, seeing that Bumpus, who was very stubborn, would not budge an inch until he had complied with this reasonable request. “We’re here and want to see more of what’s going on, and as scouts always expect to make themselves useful as well as ornamental, why we fixed it up to offer our services to the Red Cross, if so be they’d take us on.”
“Oh! then that accounts for Giraffe taking the place of the injured driver, eh?” Bumpus went on to say. “Well, it’s a funny coincidence, but do you know as I walked along the road even before I met Giraffe I was thinking of that very same thing. I guess it must have struck me because those old monks were so benevolent, and, as I understand it, spend most all their time trying to help suffering humanity along.”
“Monks!” ejaculated Allan in astonishment, “what under the sun do you mean by saying that, Bumpus? Is it apes or men you’re talking about?”
“Oh! that’s part of my story, you see,” came the quick reply; “and while we’re on our way toward the front in search of a field hospital I’ll tell you all that happened to me since we separated last night.”
This he proceeded to do, and the boys were of course deeply interested in the recital. On the whole, they considered that Bumpus had a very remarkable experience. And no doubt they could appreciate his feelings when, upon being awakened by that weird chant in the courtyard below, he looked from his window and witnessed the strange burial procession of the departed monk.
“I’m glad you found a chance to tell those good Brothers something about the success of the scout movement over in America,” Thad observed after the other had come to where he met Giraffe so unexpectedly on the road driving an ambulance in the direction of distant Paris. “I say this, because from what I’ve heard, the people over on this side of the water don’t understand what we’re doing along the lines of our work. In my mind it goes away ahead of anything they dream of here, where the scouts are only a minor military organization.”
“Still, the movement was started in England, we’ve got to remember, by Baden-Powell, the hero of the Boer war,” suggested Allan. “And then again, conditions are altogether different over here. We have no cause to fear our neighbors north or south, and two oceans separate us from other really powerful nations. If we had near neighbors who envied us our wealth, perhaps scouts in our country would have a connection with the military authorities too.”
Talking in this strain they continued to push on. And all the while that stream of laden vehicles kept going and coming, for no van was allowed to speed back to the city without its full quota of injured soldiers aboard.
“I wonder where in the wide world they’ll ever find room to accommodate them in the hospital beds of Paris?” Bumpus exclaimed, appalled by this never-ceasing string of ambulances and vans and lorries of every description that passed them by.