Mr. Wrenn, picturing him greeting the Singer Tower from an
incoming steamer, longed to see the tower.
"Gee! I'll do it!"
He rose and, from that table in the basement of an A. B. C.
restaurant, he fled to America.
He dashed up-stairs, fidgeted while the cashier made his change,
rang for a bus, whisked into his room, slammed his things into
his suit-case, announced to it wildly that they were going home,
and scampered to the Northwestem Station. He walked nervously
up and down till the Liverpool train departed. "Suppose Istra
wanted to make up, and came back to London?" was a terrifying
thought that hounded him. He dashed into the waiting-room and
wrote to her, on a souvenir post-card showing the Abbey: "Called
back to America--will write. Address care of Souvenir Company,
Twenty-eighth Street." But he didn't mail the card.
Once settled in a second-class compartment, with the train in
motion, he seemed already much nearer America, and, humming, to
the great annoyance of a lady with bangs, he planned his new
great work--the making of friends; the discovery, some day, if
Istra should not relent, of "somebody to go home to.
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