Bannon shook his head dubiously.  “Well, I’m not sure—­” he began.  But MacBride laughed, whereupon Bannon grinned in spite of himself.  “All right,” he said.

It was no laughing matter, though, here on the job this Monday morning, and, once alone in the little section house, he shook his head again gravely.  He liked Peterson too well, for one thing, to supersede him without a qualm.  But there was nothing else for it, and he took off his overcoat, laid aside the coupling pin, and attacked the stack of blue prints.

He worked rapidly, turning now and then from the plans for a reference to the building book or the specifications, whistling softly, except when he stopped to growl, from force of habit, at the office, or, with more reasonable disapproval, at the man who made the drawings for the annex.  “Regular damn bird cage,” he called it.

It was half an hour before Peterson came in.  He was wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, and drawing long breaths with the mere enjoyment of living.  “I feel good,” he said.  “That’s where I’d like to work all day.  You ought to go up and sledge them timbers for a while.  That’d warm you through, I bet.”

“You ought to make your timekeeper give you one of those brass checks there and pay you eighteen cents an hour for that work.  That’s what I’d do.”

Peterson laughed.  It took more than a hint to reach him.  “I have to do it.  Those laborers are no good.  Honest, I can lift as much as any three men on the job.”

“That’s all right if those same three don’t stop to swap lies while you’re lifting.”

“Well, I guess they don’t come any of that on me,” said Peterson, laughing again.  “How long are you going to stay with us?”

The office, then, had not told him.  Bannon was for a moment at a loss what to say.  Luckily there was an interruption.  The red-headed young man he had spoken to an hour before came in, tossed a tally board on the desk, and said that another carload of timber had come in.

“Mr. Bannon,” said Peterson, “shake hands with Mr. Max Vogel, our lumber checker.”  That formality attended to, he turned to Bannon and repeated his question.  By that time the other had his answer ready.

“Oh, it all depends on the office,” he said.  “They’re bound to keep me busy at something.  I’ll just stay until they tell me to go somewhere else.  They ain’t happy except when they’ve just put me in a hole and told me to climb out.  Generally before I’m out they pick me up and chuck me down another one.  Old MacBride wouldn’t think the Company was prosperous if I wasn’t working nights and Sundays.”

“You won’t be doing that down here.”

“I don’t know about that.  Why, when I first went to work for ’em, they hired me by the day.  My time cards for the first years figured up four hundred and thirty-six days.”  Peterson laughed.  “Oh, that’s straight,” said Bannon.  “Next time you’re at the office, ask Brown about it.  Since then they’ve paid me a salary.  They seem to think they’d have to go out of business if I ever took a vacation.  I’ve been with ’em twelve years and they’ve never given me one yet.  They made a bluff at it once.  I was down at Newport News, been doing a job for the C.&O., and Fred Brown was down that way on business.  He—­”