The earnestness of the two boys had its influence upon the English nurse.
“I promise you to do the best I can,” she told them, as she gave Jack and then Amos her little hand in parting. “It is partly because I am more than curious to see if you are as much at home in binding up the wounds of men as you seem to be at making a punctured tire whole. Good-bye! The best of luck follow your efforts to find your brother Frank. If I see him I shall surely tell him that you have come all the way over here from your land of peace to discover him.”
The ambulance went hurrying along the road, and the two boys had no idea they would ever see the red-cheeked English nurse again. They felt that they had been repaid ten times over because of the little trouble taken to relieve those in trouble.
“It certainly beats the Dutch how things turn out,” Amos was saying as they once more started to trudge along, with their backs for the most part toward the region where the big guns growled, and the tumult of battle was borne to their ears from time to time with the rising and falling of the wind.
“We’ve got little to complain of, for a fact,” added Jack. “It all goes to prove that a good act is never thrown away. We didn’t expect to be rewarded in any way when we stopped to patch up that tire; yet see how it came out.”
“Yes,” added Amos, earnestly, “after this I’ll never doubt that old saying, for it’s been proved over and over again. But I’d give a heap to know whether Frank was one of those air pilots we saw wheeling and dodging about when the battle was going on. And Jack, the scent is getting warmer all the time. We’ll find Frank yet!”
CHAPTER XVI.
FIGURING IT ALL OUT.
If other reinforcements were hurrying up to take their places on the firing line, the boys did not happen to meet them on this road. It seemed to be given over almost entirely to vehicles of every description speeding forward to carry off the bleeding forms of those whose lives might yet be saved.
There were some queer-looking vans among the rest, for every available motorcar had been pressed into the service of removing the injured to Dunkirk and Calais, where later on they could be transported to Havre and across the Channel.