It was nearly half an hour after Merritt had so firmly announced his intention of staying in the game, no matter if he should meet with a bitter disappointment in the town, which had been the loadstone for their advance through the heart of war-stricken Belgium.
"Then Brussels can't be very far away, over there," said Tubby. "Gee! I only wish we could find some scarecrows about now, and get a change of clothes."
"What makes you say that?" asked Rob. "I thought you were so proud of your suit of khaki that nothing could tempt you to give it up."
"Oh! I didn't mean I'd really want to discard this bully suit," Tubby hastened to explain. "Only if we could manage to conceal the scout uniform under something more common, why, you see the Germans might take us for Belgian boys, and in that case wouldn't molest us."
"I understand what he's getting at, Rob," Merritt chuckled, "Tubby has said a number of times that the one thing he was sorry about was that we couldn't have a run through Brussels. Seems like he got a great notion he wanted to visit there, as he'd read a lot about the wonderful city. But you'll have to let that longing sleep until the next time you come abroad, Tubby."
"Unless we happen to find we've got business in Brussels," observed the other cunningly. "Then mebbe we might decide we'd find a way to go in. 'Course I mean if they told us here in Sempst that Mr. Steven Meredith, who seems to be a pretty smart secret agent of the German Government, had changed his residence to Brussels, so as to be in touch with army headquarters and the General Staff. How about that, Merritt?"
"We won't cross rivers before we come to them," Rob hastened to remark, not wishing the other to fully commit himself to any course. "After coming so far with the intention to find our man here in this little town, it seems silly to get cold feet when we're right on the spot, and before we know anything that's against our having the best of success."
"Oh! you're right, Rob," agreed Tubby. "You remember the old motto we used to write in our copybooks at school long ago—'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' Guess that's from the Good Book, too; but it applies to our case, all the same. We'll wait till we see what is going to happen here in Sempst. Anyway, they haven't burned this little place down, because I don't see anything that looks like ruins."
Indeed, it seemed as though the peasants living close to Brussels had been induced by the Germans to continue their regular field work, under promise of purchasing for fair prices all the green stuff they could fetch into the capital. They, mostly women, old decrepit men, and children, for even the smallest could be given some task that would help out, were working in the fields.
"I wonder if any of them could understand my French," Rob was saying. "Of course it wouldn't be likely they could talk English. I've got a good notion to try it on the first one we meet on the road ahead."