Comprehension and Discussion Questions. 1. What seemed to indicate that the family was away for the summer?
1. What seemed to indicate that the family was away for the summer?
2. What was the single occasion during the previous ten days that the luck of Mr. Hogan and Mr. Burns had failed them?
3. Why did they have to abandon their car?
4. Where had they obtained the large sum of money which they carried in the suitcase?
5. Where did they finally decide to hide the suitcase?
6. Why did they choose a rather quiet, inconspicuous car?
7. When they again went back to the house, what did they discover?
8. When Mr. Hogan called Mr. Rogers by telephone, who did he say he was?
9. When Mr. Hogan and Mr. Rogers were about to leave, what three men were waiting for them?
10. Who did Mr. Rogers happen to be?
Vocabulary and Idiom Review
A. Match the word in the left-hand column with the word in the right-hand column which has the SAME meaning:
1. yellow-haired ___________ charming
2. whisper ___________ brunette
3. silently ___________ frankfurters
4. speedy ___________ hamburgers
5. hot dogs ___________ frightened
6. brown-haired ___________ foolish
7. terrified ___________ speak softly
8. grown-ups ___________ blonde
9. enchanting ___________ fast
10. silly ___________ quietly
____________adults
B. Use the following expressions in sentences of your own:
1. kneel down 6. get in touch with 11. have to
2. be in trouble 7. have got to 12. keep quiet
3. be in luck 8. safe and sound 13. make sure
4. shortly before 9. be away 14. shortly after
5. run over someone 10. on the way back
C. Some of the nouns ending both in -tion and -ment form adjectives with -al.
Example: He had some very educational experiences while he was traveling abroad.
Change the following nouns to adjectives by adding -al. Then use each of the resulting words in a sentence of your own:
1. environment _____________ __________________________________________________________________
2. tradition _____________ __________________________________________________________________
3. government _____________ __________________________________________________________________
4. ornament _____________ __________________________________________________________________
5. vocation _____________ __________________________________________________________________
6. occupation _____________ __________________________________________________________________
7. division _____________ __________________________________________________________________
8. conversation _____________ __________________________________________________________________
9. recreation _____________ __________________________________________________________________
10. addition _____________ __________________________________________________________________
Detour to Romance
By Gilbert Wright
Located in the checkroom in Union Station as I am, I see everybody that comes up the stairs.
Tony — who owned the magazine stand to my left — studied the laws of probability because he liked to bet on the horse races. He claimed that he could calculate according to his system, that if I held my job one hundred and twelve years more I would know everybody in the world by sight.
And I came to the theory that if you wait long enough in a big railroad station like Union Station you'll see everybody that travels.
I've told my theory to lots of people but nobody ever did anything about it except Harry. He came in a little over three years ago and waited at the head of the stairs for the passengers from the 9:05 train.
I remember seeing Harry that first evening. He wasn't much more than a thin, anxious kid then. He was all dressed up and I knew he was meeting his girl and that they would be married twenty minutes after she arrived. There's no use in my trying to explain how I knew all this but after you've watched people waiting at the head of the stairs for eighteen years as I have done, then it is easy.
Well, the passengers came up and I had to get busy. I didn't look toward the stairs again until nearly time for the 9:18 and I was very surprised to see that the young fellow was still there.
She didn't come on the 9:18 either, nor on the 9:40, and when the passengers from the 10:02 had all arrived and left, Harry was looking pretty desperate. Pretty soon he came close to my window so I called out and asked him what she looked like.
You would have thought that I had checked her among the packages in my checkroom from the way he came over and half crawled through my window. "She's small and dark," he says, "and nineteen years old and very neat in the way she walks. She has a face," he says, thinking a minute, "that has lots of spirit. I mean she can get mad but she never stays mad for long. And her eyebrows come to a little point in the middle. She's got a brown fur, but maybe she isn't wearing it.'
I couldn't remember seeing anybody like that.
He showed me the telegram he'd received: ARRIVE THURSDAY. MEET ME STATION. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. — MAY. It was from Omaha, Nebraska.
"Well," I finally says, "why don't you phone to your home? She's probably called there if she got in ahead of you."
He gave me a sick look, "I've only been in town two days. We were going to meet and then drive down South where I've got a job promised me. She — she hasn't any address for me." He touched the telegram. "I got this general delivery."
With that, he walked off to the head of the stairs to look over the people from the 11:22.
When I came on duty the next day he was still there and came over as soon as he saw me.
"Did she work anywhere?" I asked.
He nodded. "She was a typist. I telegraphed her former boss. All they know is that she left her job to get married."
Well, that was how it began. Harry met every train for the next three or four days. Of course, the railroad lines made a routine checkup and the police looked into the case. But nobody was any real help. I could see that they all figured that May had simply played a trick on him. But I never believed that, somehow.
One day, after about two weeks, Harry and I were talking and I told him about my theory. "If you'll just wait long enough," I says, "you'll see her coming up those stairs some day." He turned and looked at the stairs as though he had never seen them before, while I went on explaining about Tony's figures on the Laws of Probability.
Next day when I came to work Harry was behind the counter of Tony's magazine stand. He looked at me rather sheepishly and says, "Well, I had to get a job somewhere, didn't I?"
So he began to work as a clerk for Tony. We never spoke of May anymore and neither of us ever mentioned my theory. But I noticed that Harry always saw every person who came up the stairs.
Toward the end of the year Tony was killed in some argument over gambling, and Tony’s widow left Harry in complete charge of the magazine stand. And when she got married again some time later, Harry bought the stand from her. He borrowed money and, installed a soda fountain and pretty soon he had a very nice little business.
Then came yesterday. I heard a cry and a lot of things falling. The cry was from Harry and the things falling were a lot of dolls and other things which he had upset while he was jumping over the counter. He ran across and grabbed a girl not ten feet from my window. She was small and dark and her eyebrows came to a little point in the middle.
For a while they just hung there to each other laughing and crying and saying things without meaning. She'd say a few words like "It was the bus station I meant —" and he'd kiss her speechless and tell her the many things he had done to find her. What apparently had happened three years before was that May had come by bus, not by train, and in her telegram she meant "bus station", not "railroad station". She had waited at the bus station for days and had spent all her money trying to find Harry. Finally she got a job typing.
"What?" says Harry. "Have you been working in town? All the time?"
She nodded.
"Well, Heavens — didn't you ever come down here to the station?" He pointed across to his magazine stand. "I've been there all the time. I own it. I've watched everybody that came up the stairs —"
She began to look a little pale. Pretty soon she looked over at the stairs and said in a weak voice, "I — I never came up the stairs before. You see, I went out of town yesterday on a short business trip — Oh, Harry!" Then she threw her arms around his neck and really began to cry.
After a minute she backed away and pointed very stiffly toward the north end of the station. "Harry, for three years, for three solid years, I've been right over there — working right in this very station, typing, in the office of the station-master."
The wonderful thing to me is how the Laws of Probability worked so hard and so long until they finally got May to walk up those stairs of ours.