"Bricklayer, Miss."
"You needn't call her Miss," said Gertie heatedly. "You call me Gertie, don't you? Well, her name's Nora."
"What with strikes and bad times," went on Trotter unheeding, "you never knew where you was. And the foreman always bullying you. I don't know what all. I 'ad about enough of it, I can tell you. I've never been out of work since the day I landed. I've 'ad as much to eat as I wanted and I'm saving money. In this country everybody's as good as everybody else."
"If not better," said Nora dryly.
"In two years I shall be able to set up for myself. Why, there's old man Thompson, up at Pratt. He started as a bricklayer, same as I. Come from Yorkshire, he did. He's got seven thousand dollars in the bank now."
"Believe me, you fellows who come out now have a much softer thing of it than I did when I first came. In those days they wouldn't have an Englishman, they'd have a Galician rather. In Winnipeg, when they advertised in the paper for labor, you'd see often as not: 'No English need apply.'"
"Well, it was their own fault," stormed Gertie. "They wouldn't work or anything. They just soaked."
"It was their own fault, right enough. This was the dumping ground for all the idlers, drunkards and scallywags in England. They had the delusion over there that if a man was too big a rotter to do anything at all at home, he'd only got to be sent out here and he'd make a fortune."
"I guess things ain't as bad as that now," spoke up Taylor. "They send us a different class. It takes an Englishman two years longer than anybody else to get the hang of things, but when once he tumbles to it, he's better than any of them."
"Ah, well!" said Marsh, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "I guess nowadays everyone's glad to see the Englishman make good. When I nearly smashed up three years ago, I had no end of offers of help."