"What do you suppose made him do that?" said Velo musingly.
"Do what?" asked Zaidos.
"Why," said Velo, "I asked what his name was one night and he said John Smith. I think that old doctor is making a mistake."
"What does it matter?" said Zaidos. "He would make just the same effort to save the plain John Smiths as he would to save the princes of the world."
"Pooh!" said Velo, sneering. "I guess not! Why should he? He knows a thing or two and you will find it out some day. Why, nobody does anything for anybody unless they get paid for it somehow or other!"
"Oh, say," said Zaidos, getting up and striking one clenched, fist violently into the other, "I wouldn't have your little bit of a soul for anything on earth! I wouldn't have your mean, little bit of a suspicious, ungenerous mind! I hate to remind a fellow like you of anything so fine, but how about my father? What pay, pay, mind you, did he ever get for taking care of you? What did he ever get for starting that colony of sick people up on the mountain back of his hunting lodge, with a doctor right there, and a nurse or two paid by father? Do you suppose it made him feel good to see them tottering all over the preserve where he could no longer shoot, for fear of hitting some of the poor wretches?"
"No," agreed Velo, "he didn't get a thing out of all that, and I always thought that colony for the sick was the silliest thing I ever heard of. I'll tell you right now when I get hold of things—" he caught himself up quickly. "I mean, of course, when you get hold of things, if you do as I would do, you will send those people packing back to their slums as fast as they can go. As far as his doing for me, why, I'm one of the family and he sort of had to. It is a duty. Besides, do you suppose it was very much fun sticking around that house, quiet as the grave, nothing going on, no one coming to see your father but old, grey-headed men and women forever fixing up charities?"
"That's all right," said Zaidos. "Do you know what I am going to do as soon as I get out of this? I'm going to cut right back to America and study as hard as I can. Then as soon as the war is over, I will come back here and straighten everything up. I will of course keep the title. You can't give that away, and I wouldn't want to. I'm proud of my name. It is an honorable one and it has been kept clean by the men before me; but I mean to give Greece everything I can turn into money. Then I'll take enough to start me, go back to America again, and cut out a career for myself. I'm going to be a doctor and as good a doctor as ever lived if study will do it. That's the monument I mean to give my father and my mother."
He gave a jerk of the head toward Velo, who sat upright before him.
"How does that strike you, old top?" he asked and climbed down into the First Aid pit.