Florence smiled. “Here’s hoping it will.”
CHAPTER V
THE HIDDEN CAR
Once they were in the car and on their way, winding along the Rio Grande and breathing in the fresh, invigorating morning air, they felt better about having had to start so early.
“We’ll make the city early this afternoon, at this rate,” Peggy remarked. “That’ll give us time to do a little sightseeing. I wish we didn’t have to go clear to Laredo before we cross the river. I’m eager to get on Mexican soil right away.”
“That’s the way with me,” Jo Ann added. “I wish there were a short cut somewhere. It seems as if there ought to be.”
When, two hours later, they stopped at a filling station in a little town to get some gas, and Jo Ann made this same remark to the service man, he looked puzzled and merely nodded his head. Florence, realizing that he understood little English, began questioning him in Spanish.
All smiles on hearing his native language, he answered at once, “Sí, there is a bridge you can cross here. They are putting in a new highway across the desert, which joins the main highway from Laredo.”
“Bien. I think we shall go that way,” Florence replied. “It will save us much time, will it not?”
“Sí—a little. It is about a hundred kilometers less, that way.”
Florence smiled. “That is very good.” Now that she was so close to the country where her parents lived she was growing more and more eager to get home.