"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 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."