As they sped away, determined to get as far from the scene of disaster as possible, that night, Eleanor spoke.
“I wonder if there is anything else I have to live through before I can settle down quietly.”
“Now what’s the matter?” demanded Polly.
“Oh nothing, but I was just thinking—I went through a snow-slide on Grizzly Peak; a land-slide on the Flat Top; a great mountain blizzard, on the Rockies; a hold-up in New York, one night; an avalanche on the Alps, and now an earthquake in Rome. What next, I wonder?”
“You ought to be grateful that you never experienced a sinking at sea caused by a German submarine,” said Polly, earnestly.
The very seriousness of her remark made her friends laugh, so that spirits rose accordingly, and just as they felt that the worst was over, another severe quake shook the ground they were speeding over.
Dodo’s car was ahead, with its headlights streaming in advance upon the roadway. Immediately after the last shake, a deep rumbling and crackling was heard as if something ahead of them had parted and fallen down. Dodo leaned forward anxiously and gasped.
Mrs. Fabian was with her in the roadster, and the girl quickly put on the brakes and reversed the wheel. “Just look out, Mrs. Fabian, and see if you can see a gap across the road.”
Even as she spoke, Mr. Alexander passed the little car and shouted to Dodo: “What’d you stop for—right in the middle of the road?”
The next moment he was biting his tongue when the front wheels on his car caved into the newly made crevice across the road. Everyone was jounced up and down frightfully as the wheels settled into the soft earth, and Dodo jumped out to see if anyone was injured.