“Then look at the clear atmosphere; the picturesque buildings hanging over the river banks; the queer shaped boats running back and forth; the remarkable costumes of these Magyars; and last, but far from least, that glorious August sunset painting the little clouds in the west crimson and green and gold. I tell you it’s a scream of a place, if you’ve got any eyes in your head.”
“Buster, you’re a wonder at word painting, though I reckon you cribbed some of that stuff from the guide book. What do you say to it now, old If and But and Maybe?”
“Why, it looks good enough, I own up, fellows, but chances are all this is only on the surface. Scratch the veneer off when you go ashore to-morrow, and prowl around, and you’ll find Budapest just as rotten at the core as Chicago.”
“Don’t waste any more words on the growler, Buster. There’s such a thing as casting pearls before swine, you know—not saying that our chum here is really and truly a hog; but all the same he grunts like one. Let’s talk about our own affairs.”
“Wonder if Jack will fetch a sheaf of letters back from the postoffice? And say, I’m just a little mite anxious to learn how that spat between Serbia and Austria is going to turn out.”
“All of us are, Buster, and have been ever since we read how the Grand Duke who was the latest heir to the Austrian throne after Francis Joseph was murdered with his wife by some Serbian hothead conspirators.”
“Oh, as far as that goes, Josh, I figure that the game little bantam will have to take water and back down, after all this strutting around, just to show that Serbians have pluck.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, fellows,” put in George; “you mustn’t forget that Russia, yes, and France, too, are back of Serbia. There may be something more come out of this rattling of sabres in their scabbards than only a tempest in a teapot.”
“Then it would be Russia and France against the two Teuton States,” remarked the boy answering to the suggestive name of Buster; “and knowing how the Kaiser has been getting his country ready for a scrap this long while, I’d bet on them to turn the trick.”