“Yes, there was nothing for it but that the boy go to Budapest with his little sister and stay there while the operation went on. From what he tells me he was in the Hungarian capital nearly a month. The surgeon operated, and the thing turned out a splendid success. You ought to have seen how his face lighted up when he told me in sign language that she could see now just as well as any one.”
“Then why didn’t he start home right away, knowing how anxious his mother must be?” asked George incredulously.
“First the surgeon would not allow it for a certain time after the bandages were taken off. Then, as luck would have it, just when they were about to start, a thief broke into their apartment and stole every dollar, or whatever money the Serbians use.”
“Oh, how tough that was!” exclaimed Buster sympathetically.
“A likely story, I call it,” muttered George.
“On top of it all the war broke out, and he knew that unless they hurried off from Budapest the Hungarian authorities might arrest them. So they sold a few of their things and get enough money together to carry them part of the way to the Serbian border. Then they had to leave the train and start to tramp the rest of the way. Neither of them have had a bite this whole day. Seeing us land, he became desperate and determined to appeal to us to help him, if we looked as if we were kind people. Then I chanced to run across him. That’s what he told me, as near as I could make it out.”
Jack saw that while Buster and Josh were disposed to believe the young stranger, George still hung back.
“It makes a pretty interesting story, that’s right,” was what George said, “but there’s a fishy part to it. That little sister sounds like an invention to get our sympathy. Where is she at, I’d like to know; let him produce the kid, say I.”