Dr. Overton had not said
just when he was going, and suppose she were to need someone at
once? Or suppose something were to happen to him--if he were to be
killed upon the long train-journey? I was like a mother who has had
a terrible dream about her child--she must rush and fling her arms
about the child. I realised that I wanted to see Sylvia!
She had begged me to come; and I was worn out and had been urged by
the office to take a rest. Suddenly I bolted into a store, and
telephoned the railroad station about trains to Southern Florida. I
hailed a taxi-cab, rode to my home post-haste, and flung a few of my
belongings into a bag and the waiting cab sped with me to the ferry.
In little more than two hours after Claire had told me the dreadful
tidings, I was speeding on my way to Sylvia.
11. From a train-window I had once beheld a cross-section of America
from West to East; now I beheld another from North to South. In the
afternoon were the farms and country-homes of New Jersey; and then
in the morning endless wastes of wilderness, and straggling fields
of young corn and tobacco; turpentine forests, with half-stripped
negroes working, and a procession of "depots," with lanky men
chewing tobacco, and negroes basking in the blazing sun.
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