“Yes, if we could go straight,” amended Bert, pessimistically.
“Oh, we’ll go straight enough. She says St. Thomas is only eight miles to our left.”
So on we went. The moon rose. Across flat meadows in the pale light, lamps in distant houses looked like ships at sea, sailing off a sandy coast. There were clumps of pines or poplars gracefully distributed about the landscape. The air was moist, but so fragrant and warm! These were the bottom lands of the White and Wabash Rivers, quite marshy in places, and fifteen miles farther south we would have to cross the White River on a ferry.
We sped on. The road became sandy and soft. Now and then it broke into muddy stretches where we had to go slow. From straggling teamsters we gathered characteristic and sometimes amusing directions.
“Yuh go up here about four miles to Ed Peters' place. It’s the big white store on the corner—yuh can’t miss it. Then yuh turn to yer left about three miles, till yuh come to the school on the high ground there (a rise of about eight feet it was). Then yuh turn to yer right and go down through the marsh to the iron bridge, and that’ll bring yer right into the Decker Road.”
We gathered this as we were leaving St. Thomas, a lonely Catholic outpost, with a church and sisters' school of some kind.
On and on. Riding is delightful in such a country. In lovely cottages as we tore past I heard mellifluous voices singing in some archaic way. You could see lighted lamps on the family tables,—a man or woman or both sitting by reading. On doorsteps, in dooryards now and then were loungers, possibly indifferent to the mosquitoes. The moon cleared to a silvery perfection and lighted all the fields and trees. There were owl voices and bats. In Ed Peters' place a crowd of country bumpkins were disporting themselves.
“Har, har, har! Whee-oh!”
You should have heard the laughter. It was infectious.
A man outside directed us further. We came to the school, the iron bridge in the marsh, and then by a wrong road away from Decker, but we found it finally.