“Miller!” It was the head waiter of one of the dining-rooms downstairs—a man who had for several years been a second head waiter in a celebrated New York hotel and who had once been a butler for a member of our family. The expression on his face was one of such surprise, bewilderment, apology, shame and humility that I found myself explaining:
“We were to have picnicked along the road, but it rained. And so we have picnicked——! It is very simple!”
“Yes, madam,” he agreed, stoically. But it was not until I had assured him that we never picnicked more than once a day indoors and had given him permission to order our dinner at what time and wherever he pleased, and most particularly after I refused to allow him to send a waiter to put the room in order and be a witness to the family’s eccentricities that he became his urbane, impassible self once more.
Tonight I suppose we will have to deck ourselves out in our best bibs and tuckers and sit through a conventionally complete dinner at the most prominent table in the dining-room so that Miller may suffer no loss to his proper pride.
CHAPTER X
MUD!!
We have struck it!
It looks pretty much as though our motor trip to San Francisco were going to end in Rochelle, Illinois.
Thirty-six miles out of Chicago we met the Lincoln Highway and from the first found it a disappointment. As the most important, advertised and lauded road in our country, its first appearance was not engaging. If it were called the cross continent trail you would expect little, and be philosophical about less, but the very word “highway” suggests macadam at the least. And with such titles as “Transcontinental” and “Lincoln” put before it, you dream of a wide straight road like the Route Nationale of France, or state roads in the East, and you wake rather unhappily to the actuality of a meandering dirt road that becomes mud half a foot deep after a day or two of rain!
Still we went over it easily enough until we passed De Kalb.[3] After that the only “highway” attributes left were the painted red, white and blue signs decorating the telegraph poles along the way. The highway itself disappeared into a wallow of mud! The center of the road was slightly turtle-backed; the sides were of thick, black ooze and ungaugeably deep, and the car was possessed, as though it were alive, to pivot around and slide backward into it. We had no chains with us, and had passed no places where we could get any. Apart from the difficulty of keeping going on chainless tires our only danger, except that of being bogged, was in getting over the bridges that had no railings to their approaches. The car chasséd up every one, swung over toward the embankment, slewed back on the bridge, went across that steadily, and dove into the mud again! It certainly was dampening to one’s ardor for motoring. If the Lincoln Highway was like this what would the ordinary road be after it branched away at Sterling?