CHAPTER XII

On the twenty-second of November Bannon received this telegram:--

MR. CHARLES BANNON, care of MacBride & Company, South Chicago:

We send to-day complete drawings for marine tower which you will build in the middle of spouting house. Harahan Company are building the Leg.

MACBRIDE & CO.

Bannon read it carefully, folded it, opened it and read it again, then tossed it on the desk.

"We're off now, for sure," he said to Miss Vogel. "I've known that was coming sure as Christmas."

Hilda picked it up.

"Is there an answer, Mr. Bannon?"

"No, just file it. Do you make it out?"

She read it and shook her head. Bannon ignored her cool manner.

"It means that your friends on MacBride & Company's Calumet house are going to have the time of their lives for the next few weeks. I'm going to carry compressed food in my pockets, and when meal time comes around, just take a capsule."

"I think I know," she said slowly; "a marine leg is the thing that takes grain up out of ships."

"That's right. You'd better move up head."

"And we've been building a spouting house instead to load it into ships."

"We'll have to build both now. You see, it's getting around to the time when the Pages'll be having a fit every day until the machinery's running, and every bin is full. And every time they have a fit, the people up at the office'll have another, and they'll pa.s.s it on to us."

"But why do they want the marine leg?" she asked, "any more now than they did at first?"

"They've got to get the wheat down by boat instead of rail, that's all.

Or likely it'll be coming both ways. There's no telling now what's behind it. Both sides have got big men fighting. You've seen it in the papers, haven't you?"

She nodded.

"Of course, what the papers say isn't all true, but it's lively doings all right."

The next morning's mail brought the drawings and instructions; and with them came a letter from Brown to Bannon. "I suppose there's not much good in telling you to hurry," it ran; "but if there is another minute a day you can crowd in, I guess you know what to do with it. Page told me to-day that this elevator will make or break them. Mr. MacBride says that you can have all January for a vacation if you get it through. We owe you two weeks off, anyhow, that you didn't take last summer. We're running down that C. & S. C. business, though I don't believe, myself, that they'll give you any more trouble."

Bannon read it to Hilda, saying as he laid it down:--

"That's something like. I don't know where'll I go, though. Winter ain't exactly the time for a vacation, unless you go shooting, and I'm no hand for that."

"Couldn't you put it off till summer?" she asked, smiling a little.

"Not much. You don't know those people. By the time summer'd come around, they'd have forgotten I ever worked here. I'd strike for a month and Brown would grin and say: 'That's all right, Bannon, you deserve it if anybody does. It'll take a week or so to get your pa.s.s arranged, and you might just run out to San Francisco and see if things are going the way they ought to,' And then the first thing I knew I'd be working three shifts somewhere over in China, and Brown would be writing me I was putting in too much time at my meals. No, if MacBride & Company offer you a holiday, the best thing you can do is to grab it, and run, and saw off the telegraph poles behind you. And you couldn't be sure of yourself then."

He turned the letter over in his hand.

"I might go up on the St. Lawrence," he went on. "That's the only place for spending the winter that ever struck me."

"Isn't it pretty cold?"

"It ain't so bad. I was up there last winter. We put up at a house at Coteau, you know. When I got there the foundation wasn't even begun, and we had a bad time getting laborers. I put in the first day sitting on the ice sawing off spiles."

Hilda laughed.

"I shouldn't think you'd care much about going back."

"Were you ever there?" he asked.

"No, I've never been anywhere but home and here, in Chicago."

"Where is your home?"

"It was up in Michigan. That's where Max learned the lumber business.

But he and I have been here for nearly two years."

"Well," said Bannon, "some folks may think it's cold up there, but there ain't anywhere else to touch it. It's high ground, you know--nothing like this"--he swept his arm about to indicate the flats outside--"and the scenery beats anything this side of the Rockies. It ain't that there's mountains there, you understand, but it's all big and open, and they've got forests there that would make your Michigan pine woods look like weeds on a sandhill. And the river's great. You haven't seen anything really fine till you've seen the rapids in winter. The people there have a good time too. They know how to enjoy life--it isn't all grime and sweat and making money."

"Well," said Hilda, looking down at her pencil and drawing aimless designs as she talked, "I suppose it is a good place to go. I've seen the pictures, of course, in the time-tables; and one of the railroad offices on Clark Street used to have some big photographs of the St.

Lawrence in the window. I looked at them sometimes, but I never thought of really seeing anything like that. I've had some pretty good times on the lake and over at St. Joe. Max used to take me over to Berrien Springs last summer, when he could get off. My aunt lives there."

Bannon was b.u.t.toning his coat, and looking at her. He felt the different tone that had got into their talk. It had been impersonal a few minutes before.

"Oh, St. Joe isn't bad," he was saying; "it's quiet and restful and all that, but it's not the same sort of thing at all. You go over there and ride up the river on the May Graham, and it makes you feel lazy and comfortable, but it doesn't stir you up inside like the St. Lawrence does."

She looked up. Her eyes were sparkling as they had sparkled that afternoon on the elevator when she first looked out into the sunset.

"Yes," she replied. "I think I know what you mean. But I never really felt that way; I've only thought about it."

Bannon turned half away, as if to go.

"You'll have to go down there, that's all," he said abruptly. He looked back at her over his shoulder, and added, "That's all there is about it."

Her eyes were half startled, half mischievous, for his voice had been still less impersonal than before. Then she turned back to her work, her face sober, but an amused twinkle lingering in her eyes.

"I should like to go," she said, her pencil poised at the top of a long column. "Max would like it, too."

After supper that evening Max returned early from a visit to the injured man, and told Hilda of a new trouble.

"Do you know that little delegate that's been hanging around?" he asked.

"Grady," she said, and nodded.