The girl slept.
At nine o'clock the twenty-mile drive ended in a long, slow
climb up a road so washed out, so full of holes and bowlders,
that it was no road at all but simply a weather-beaten hillside.
A mile of this, with the liveryman's curses--"dod rot it" and
"gosh dang it" and similar modifications of profanity for
Christian use and for the presence of "the sex"--ringing out at
every step. Susan soon awakened, rather because the surrey was
pitching so wildly than because of Goslin's denunciations. A
brief level stretch and they stopped for Warham to open the
outer gate into his brother Zeke's big farm. A quarter of a mile
through wheat to the tops of the wheels and they reached the
second gate. A descent into a valley, a crossing of a creek, an
ascent of a steep hill, and they were at the third gate--between
pasture and barnyard. Now they came into view of the house, set
upon a slope where a spring bubbled out. The house was white and
a white picket fence cut off its lawn from the barnyard. A dog
with a deep voice began to bark. They drove up to the front gate
and stopped. The dog barked in a frenzy of rage, and they heard
his straining and jerking at his chain. A clump of cedars
brooded to the right of the house; their trunks were whitewashed
up to the lowest branches. The house had a high stoop with
wooden steps.
As Warham descended and hallooed, there came a fierce tugging at
the front door from the inside.
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