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 pass 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 timetables; 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