He of course could tell the exact route and the necessary steps to be taken; but it had been no part of Eurie's wisdom to ask about the journey thither; she knew how many boats were on the lake, and what kind of fish could be caught in it, but the most direct way to reach it was a minor matter. So there they were, simply blundering along, in the belief that the railroad officials knew their business, and would get them somewhere sometime.
As the day waned, and the road became more unknown to them, and their weariness grew upon them, they fell to indulging in those stale jokes that young ladies will perpetrate when they don't know what else to do. As they declared, with much laughter, and many smart ways of saying it, that Chautauqua was a myth of Eurie's brain, or that she had been the dupe of the fine young theological student who had chanced her way and that the search for paradise would come to naught, perhaps it was not all joking; for, as the hours passed and they journeyed on, hearing nothing about the place of which for the last few weeks they had thought so much, a queer feeling began to steal over them that there really was no such spot, and that they were all a set of idiots.
"I thought we should have been there by this time, and regularly established at housekeeping," Marion said, as they picked up baskets and bundles and prepared to change cars; "and here we are making another change. This is the third this afternoon, or is it the thirteenth? and who knows where Brocton is or what it is? Is anybody sure that it is in this hemisphere? Eurie, you are certain that your theological student did not cross the Atlantic in order to reach his elysium?"
"Brocton is _here_," Eurie said, as they climbed the steps of the car. "I see the name on that building yonder; though whether 'here' is America or Asia I am unable to say. I think we have come overland, but it is so long since we started I may have forgotten."
But at this point they checked their nonsense and began to get up a new interest in existence. They were among a different class of people--earnest, eager people, who seemed to have no thought of yawns or weariness. Camp-stools abounded, with here and there a bundle looking like quilts and pillows. Every lady had a waterproof and every man an umbrella, and the talk was of "tents," and "division meetings," and "the morning boats," with stray words like "Fairpoint" and "Mayville" coming in every now and then. These two words, the girls knew had to do with _their_ hopes; so they began to feel revived.