A Hoosier Chronicle | Page 8

swept softly
through the dining-room windows. Feeling her eyes upon him the old
gentleman suddenly roused himself.
"We've had good times, haven't we, Sylvia? And I wonder if I have
really taught you anything. I suppose I ought to have been sending you
to school with the other youngsters about here, but the fact is that I
never saw a time when I wanted to part with you! You've been a fine
little shipmate, but you're not so little any more. Sixteen your next
birthday! If that's so it isn't best for us to go on this way. You must try
your oar in deeper water. You've outgrown me--and I'm a dull old
fellow at best. You must go where you will meet other girls, and deal
with a variety of teachers,--not just one dingy old fellow like me. Have

you ever thought what kind of a school you'd like to go to?"
"I don't believe I have; I don't know much about schools."
"Well, don't you think you'd like to get away from so much
mathematics and learn things that will fit you to be entertaining and
amusing? You know I've taught you a lot of things just to amuse myself
and they can never be of the slightest use to you. I suppose you are the
only girl of your age in America who can read the sextant and calculate
latitude and longitude. But, bless me, what's the use?"
"Oh, if I could only--"
"Only what?" he encouraged her. He was greatly interested in getting
her point of view, and it was perfectly clear that a great idea possessed
her.
"Oh, if I could only go to college, that would be the finest thing in the
world!"
"You think that would be more interesting than boarding-school? If you
go to college they may require Greek and you don't even know what
the letters look like!"
"Oh, yes, I know a little about it!"
"I think not, Sylvia. How could you?"
"Oh, the letters were so queer, I learned them just for fun out of an old
textbook I found on the campus one day. Nobody ever came to claim it,
so I read it all through and learned all the declensions and vocabularies,
though I only guessed at the pronunciation."
Professor Kelton was greatly amused. "You tackled Greek just for fun,
did you?" he laughed; then, after a moment's absorption: "I'm going to
Indianapolis to-morrow and I'll take you with me, if you care to go
along. In fact, I've written to Mrs. Owen that we're coming, and I've
kept this as a little surprise for you."

So, after an early breakfast the next morning, they were off for the
station in one of those disreputable, shaky village hacks that Dr.
Wandless always called "dark Icarian birds," with their two bags piled
on the seat before them. On the few railway journeys Sylvia
remembered, she had been carried on half-fare tickets, an ignominy
which she recalled with shame. To-day she was a full-grown passenger
with a seat to herself, her grandfather being engaged through nearly the
whole of their hour's swift journey in a political discussion with a
lawyer who was one of the college trustees.
"I told Mrs. Owen not to meet us; it's a nuisance having to meet
people," said the professor when they had reached the city. "But she
always sends a carriage when she expects me."
As they stepped out upon the street a station wagon driven by an old
negro appeared promptly at the curb.
"Mawnin', Cap'n; mawnin'! Yo' just on time. Mis' Sally tole me to kerry
you all right up to the haouse. Yes, seh."
Sylvia did not know, what later historians may be interested to learn
from these pages, that the station wagon, drawn by a single horse, was
for years the commonest vehicle known to the people of the Hoosier
capital. The panic of 1873 had hit the town so hard, the community's
punishment for its sins of inflation had been so drastic, that it had
accepted meekly the rebuke implied in its designation as a one-horse
town. In 1884 came another shock to confidence, and in 1893, still
another earthquake, as though the knees of the proud must at intervals
be humbled. The one-horse station wagon continued to symbolize the
quiet domesticity of the citizens of the Hoosier capital: women of
unimpeachable social standing carried their own baskets through the
aisles of the city market or drove home with onion tops waving
triumphantly on the seat beside them. We had not yet hitched our
wagon to a gasoline tank, but traffic regulations were enforced by cruel
policemen, to the terror of women long given to leisurely manoeuvres
on the wrong side of our busiest thoroughfares. The driving of cattle
through