"Backward, turn backward, Glow-worm, in your flight,
Rescue poor Sahwah from her muddy plight!"
I spouted.
Which was easier said than done. That road was built for traveling ahead and not for turning. On one side was the swamp and on the other a steep drop off into a lake.
"We're in the straight and narrow path all right," said Nyoda, viewing the landscape. Then she sarcastically began to quote from a well-known automobile advertisement which emphasized the superiority of a long wheel base, whatever that is. "The Glow-worm simply won't make the turn," she said. "Here's one instance when the worm won't turn."
"It's a long worm that knows no turning," I misquoted.
Nyoda tried again, and this time, with its rear wheels in the swamp and its front lamps hanging over the precipice, the Glow-worm did turn. We were limp as rags from the strain by the time we were safely back in the road. I had been trying to make up my mind which would do the least damage to my clothes, landing in the swamp or in the lake, and had just about decided on the lake as the lesser of the two evils, as I couldn't get much wetter anyhow, when Nyoda called out, "It's all over."
"If you're speaking of the mud it certainly is all over," I said, feeling of the spatters on the back of the seat.
"Mud baths are hygienic," said Nyoda drily, if anyone can be said to speak drily when they are dripping at every corner. "Be a sport if you can't be a philosopher." Which statement contained food for reflection, as they say in books.
We made our way slowly and splashily back to the mud-wreathed gate, alas, we shoved sir—Gracious! I'm tobogganing into a quotation again! But, like the girl in the poem when the lover comes back to the gate after many years, Sahwah wasn't there. We called, oh, how we did call! With voices as hoarse as the frogs in the swamp.
"We might as well stop calling," said Nyoda, disgustedly. "She won't be able to tell the difference between us and the frogs."