Bannon’s next move was to write to Minneapolis for information and instructions, but MacBride, who seemed to have all the information there was, happened to be in Duluth, and Brown’s instructions were consequently foggy.  So, after waiting a few days for something more definite, Bannon disappeared one afternoon and was gone more than an hour.  When he strode into the office again, keen and springy as though his work had just begun, Hilda looked up and smiled a little.  Pete was tilted back in the chair staring glumly out of the window.  He did not turn until Bannon slapped him jovially on the shoulders and told him to cheer up.

“Those railroad chaps are laying for us, sure enough,” he said.  “I’ve been talking to MacBride himself—­over at the telephone exchange; he ain’t in town—­and he said that Porter—­he’s the vice-president of the C. & S. C.—­ Porter told him, when he was in Chicago, that they wouldn’t object at all to our building the gallery over their tracks.  But that’s all we’ve got to go by.  Not a word on paper.  Oh, they mean to give us a picnic, and no mistake!”

With that, Bannon called up the general offices of the C. & S. C. and asked for Mr. Porter.  There was some little delay in getting the connection, and then three or four minutes of fencing while a young man at the other end of the line tried to satisfy himself that Bannon had the right to ask for Mr. Porter, let alone to talk with him, and Bannon, steadily ignoring his questions, continued blandly requesting him to call Mr. Porter to the telephone.  Hilda was listening with interest, for Bannon’s manner was different from anything she had ever seen in him before.  It lacked nothing of his customary assurance, but its breeziness gave place to the most studied restraint; he might have been a railroad president himself.  He hung up the receiver, however, without accomplishing anything, for the young man finally told him that Mr. Porter had gone out for the afternoon.

So next morning Bannon tried again.  He learned that Porter was in, and all seemed to be going well until he mentioned MacBride & Company, after which Mr. Porter became very elusive.  Three or four attempts to pin him down, or at least to learn his whereabouts, proved unsuccessful, and at last Bannon, with wrath in his heart, started down town.

It was nearly night before he came back, and as before, he found Pete sitting gloomily in the office waiting his return.  “Well,” exclaimed the night boss, looking at him eagerly; “I thought you was never coming back.  We’ve most had a fit here, wondering how you’d come out.  I don’t have to ask you, though.  I can see by your looks that we’re all right.”

Bannon laughed, and glanced over at Hilda, who was watching him closely.  “Is that your guess, too, Miss Vogel?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.  “I think you’ve had a pretty hard time.”

“They’re both good guesses,” he said, pulling a paper out of his pocket, and handing it to Hilda.  “Read that.”  It was a formal permit for building the gallery, signed by Porter himself, and bearing the O.K. of the general manager.