Uncle John was again trotting up and down the room, this time in a state of barely repressed excitement.

“The very thing!” he cried.  “Clever, practical, and—­eh—­eh—­tremendously interesting.  Now, then, listen carefully—­all of you!  It’s up to you, Jones, to accompany Maud on the night express to Washington.  Get the Red Cross Society to back our scheme and supply us with proper credentials.  The Arabella must be rated as a hospital ship and our party endorsed as a distinct private branch of the Red Cross—­what they call a ‘unit.’  I’ll give you a letter to our senator and he will look after our passports and all necessary papers.  I—­I helped elect him, you know.  And while you’re gone it shall be my business to fit the ship with all the supplies we shall need to promote our mission of mercy.”

“I’ll share the expense,” proposed the boy.

“No, you won’t.  You’ve done enough in furnishing the ship and crew.  I’ll attend to the rest.”

“And Beth and I will be Uncle John’s assistants,” said Patsy.  “We shall want heaps of lint and bandages, drugs and liniments and—­”

“And, above all, a doctor,” advised Ajo.  “One of the mates on my yacht, Kelsey by name, is a half-way physician, having studied medicine in his youth and practiced it on the crew for the last dozen years; but what we really need on a hospital ship is a bang-up surgeon.”

“This promises to become an expensive undertaking,” remarked Maud, with a sigh.  “Perhaps it will be better to let me go alone, as I originally expected to do.  But, if we take along the hospital ship, do not be extravagant, Mr. Merrick, in equipping it.  I feel that I have been the innocent cause of drawing you all into this venture and I do not want it to prove a hardship to my friends.”

“All right, Maud,” returned Uncle John, with a cheerful grin, “I’ll try to economize, now that you’ve warned me.”

Ajo smiled and Patsy Doyle laughed outright.  They knew it would not inconvenience the little rich man, in the slightest degree, to fit out a dozen hospital ships.

CHAPTER III

THE DECISION OF DOCTOR GYS

Uncle John was up bright and early next morning, and directly after breakfast he called upon his old friend and physician, Dr. Barlow.  After explaining the undertaking on which he had embarked, Mr. Merrick added: 

“You see, we need a surgeon with us; a clever, keen chap who understands his business thoroughly, a sawbones with all the modern scientific discoveries saturating him to his finger-tips.  Tell me where to get him.”

Dr. Barlow, recovering somewhat from his astonishment, smiled deprecatingly.

“The sort of man you describe,” said he, “would cost you a fortune, for you would oblige him to abandon a large and lucrative practice in order to accompany you.  I doubt, indeed, if any price would tempt him to abandon his patients.”