Seldom had a breakfast tasted better, they all agreed, and thus well fortified they again took up their journey.
“Looks like rain,” commented Ned at the wheel, after they had had dinner and saw, with satisfaction, that they had made good progress.
“So it does,” agreed Jerry, with a glance at the clouds. “But it takes more than rain to stop us. We’ll keep on.”
The automobile was well adapted for traveling through a storm, for it could be enclosed completely. It began to drizzle shortly after Ned’s remark, and this soon turned into a regular downpour. They were in a comparatively untraveled section of the country, and were a bit uncertain what road to take when they came to a fork. A man driving a wagon came along in the midst of their indecision, however, and answered their inquiry by saying:
“Both roads go to Falkenburg, but the right’s the shortest.”
“Then we’ll take that,” decided Ned, and once more they were under way. But the shortest way is not always the best, and they had not proceeded more than a mile before they ran into a stretch of sticky, greasy clay on which the car at once began to skid.
“Better put the tire chains on,” suggested Jerry.
Ned, who was steering, hesitated. It was no pleasant undertaking in the downpour.
“I think this bad stretch comes to an end a little farther on,” he said. “I’ll chance it.”
“Drive slow, then,” warned Jerry.