CHAPTER X. 



BY PHAETON TO CANADA — NOTES OF A SEVEN HUNDRED 



MILES TRIP. 



Where shall we begin to tell you about our very best 

 journey? Perhaps the beginning is a good starting point, 

 but we must make long leaps somewhere or the story 

 will be as long as the journey. We have taken a great 

 many phaeton trips — we think we will not say how 

 many much longer — but we will say softly to you that 

 two more will make twenty. They are never planned 

 beforehand, so of course we did not know when we 

 started oflf on the morning of July 8th that we were 

 going to "skip to Canada." When the daily letters 

 began to appear with little pink stamps on them, some 

 were so unkind as to doubt our veracity, and declare a 

 solemn belief that we meant to go there all the time, for 

 all we said we really did not know where we would go 

 after we got to Fitchburg. If it was in our inner mind, 

 the idea never found expression until we had that chance 

 conversation at Burlington, a full week after we left 

 home. 



That week alone would have been a fair summer "out- 

 ing." The first one hundred miles was along a lovely, 

 woodsy road, taking us through Winchendon, Fitz- 

 william, Keene, Walpole, Bellows Falls and Chester to 

 Ludlow. The gap between Chester and Ludlow would 

 be a charming daily drive in midsummer. From Ludlow 

 the fates led us over Mt. Holly to Rutland, where we 



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