shaped like a drygoods box, that’s going up on the corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Ashland, west.”
“And ten years from now?”
“Ten years from now maybe they'll let me do the plans for the drygoods box all alone.”
“Why don’t you drop it?”
He was startled. “Drop it! How do you mean?”
“Chuck it. Do something that will bring you quick results. This isn’t an age of waiting. Suppose, twenty years from now, you do plan a grand Gothic office building to grace this new and glorified Michigan Boulevard they’re always shouting about! You'll be a middle-aged man living in a middle-class house in a middle-class suburb with a middle-class wife.”
“Maybe”—slightly nettled. “And maybe I'll be the Sir Christopher Wren of Chicago.”
“Who's he?”
“Good G-, how often have you been in London?”
“Three times.”
“Next time you find yourself there you might cast your eye over a very nice little structure called St. Paul’s Cathedral. I've never seen it but it has been very well spoken of.”
They turned in at the gates of Stormwood. Though the trees and bushes were gaunt and bare the grass already showed stretches of vivid green. In the fading light one caught glimpses through the shrubbery of the lake beyond. It was a dazzling sapphire blue in the sunset. A final turn of the drive. An avenue of
