CHAPTER V.
HUGH SCENTS A MYSTERY.
When the owner of the plant asked Hugh that strange question it flashed upon the scout master that his comrades had noticed the Red Cross nurse acting in a peculiar fashion at the time Mr. Campertown sat there in the big touring car in which the sheriff and some of his hastily summoned posse had come on the scene.
Yes, he remembered how Alec, acting as spokesman for the others, had mentioned the fact of her seeming to shrink back as though to avoid being particularly noticed by the millionaire. She had stared very hard at the little boy, too, and Alec had, in his impetuous way, even gone so far as to characterize her look as a hungry one, as though she could eat the child.
He knew that Mr. Campertown was looking at him as he waited to hear his reply; and so the boy hastened to collect his thoughts.
“Why, I never saw them before they came in the ambulance, sir,” he commenced to say. “There were two nurses with Dr. Richter, both of them connected with the Red Cross hospital in Farmingdale, sir.”
“Yes, I understand, Hugh; but it was the younger nurse to whom I was referring,” the other hastened to tell the scout master.
“Her name is Nurse Jones,” Hugh replied; “that’s all I know about her, except that she’s got a natural gift along the line of nursing people. When she comes along they seem to forget all their troubles in her sunny smile. I watched this happen more than a few times, sir.”
He could see that Mr. Campertown looked disappointed. Evidently something in connection with Nurse Jones had caused the rich man to want to know more about her.
Hugh told himself that it was none of his business, and he had better forget all about it; but at the same time he was going to find this a difficult thing to do, especially when his boyish curiosity was bound to be piqued continually.
After he left Mr. Campertown, Hugh walked back to the foreign settlement. Here he found the padrone watching the changes that were taking place inside that little frame schoolhouse, under the supervision of the surgeon and the nurse.