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.
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