“Sure he is,” replied the other, “though chances are the cub’s giving him taffy just to keep him quiet.”
“But Jack seems to be interested a whole lot,” objected Buster.
“I think Jack means to join us presently, from the way he nodded to me just then,” Josh went on to say hastily, “so don’t hurry on the supper more than you can help. For all we know we may have to share it with four instead of one.”
It proved to be just as Josh had predicted, for presently Jack left the side of the dark-faced young stranger and come over to the fire.
“Well, how did you manage to get on with him?” asked Josh impetuously.
“It grew easier as we went on,” said Jack. “He knows just a little bit of English, after all. When that failed he resorted to the paper and pencil, or else made gestures. When I shook my head to tell him it was all a mystery to me, he would try again in a different way, and we always succeeded in getting there by one means or another.”
“Did he own up in the end, Jack?” asked Josh.
“If you mean about being one of the four Serbian youths we thought he might be, he denied it absolutely,” came the reply.
“H’m! What else could you expect, since their game had been knocked on the head by the breaking out of the war and they found themselves being hunted like rats in a hostile territory, afraid to ask for anything to eat because they’d like as not be grabbed? No wonder he looks hungry, say I.”
Jack looked at the other and shook his head.