“The roads will be full of mudholes for miles,” said Luke Shepard. “Never mind if it does stop raining, it will be bad traveling for an automobile. You see, I know this section of the country pretty well.”
“Cracky!” groaned Neale. “We may get into another mess, then.”
“You’re likely to do so,” agreed Luke. “Of course, by morning, if it rains no more, the water will have practically all run off. The roads being sandy hereabout they soon dry out.”
“And meanwhile we’ll be running risks every mile,” growled Neale O’Neil.
“Every rod,” said Luke, smiling.
“Cracky! but you’re a cheerful fellow,” said the boy from Milton. “Don’t let the girls hear you say it. Agnes, especially. She’ll go up in the air.”
“You’d better take shelter with us, then,” proposed the young tinware peddler.
“How’s that?” asked Neale, curiously. “Not in that party-wagon of yours? We’d sure be a ‘close corporation.’”
“Oh, no!” and the other laughed. “We’re going to Alonzo Keech’s barn. It’s up a side road a piece—just around this turn. That’s where sis and I were heading for. You see,” Luke Shepard further explained, “we have established a regular route for our wares, and we have been here before—and put up at Keech’s barn, too.”
Meanwhile Cecile Shepard had suggested the same thing to Mrs. Heard and the Corner House girls. They all agreed to this, for to the automobile touring party it was “any port in a storm.”