When the noon whistle blew Bannon and Max were standing near the annex. Already the bins and walls had been raised more than a foot above the foundation, which gave it the appearance of a great checker-board.
"Looks like business, doesn't it," said Max. He was a little excited, for now there was to be no more delaying until the elevator should stand completed from the working floor to the top, one hundred and sixty feet above the ground; until engines, conveyors, and scales should be working smoothly and every bin filled with grain. Indeed, nearly everybody on the job had by this time caught the spirit of energy that Bannon had infused into the work.
"I'll be glad when it gets up far enough to look like something, so we can feel that things are really getting on."
"They're getting on all right," Bannon replied.
"How soon will we be working on the cupola?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!" Max stopped (they had started toward the office) and looked at
Bannon in amazement. "Why, we can't do it, can we?"
"Why not?" Bannon pointed toward a cleared space behind the pile of cribbing, where the carpenters had been at work on the heavy timbers, "They're all ready for the framing."
Max made no reply, but he looked up as they passed the elevator and measured with his eyes the space remaining between the cribbing and the tops of the posts. He had yet to become accustomed to Bannon's methods; but he had seen enough of him to believe that it would be done if Bannon said so.
They were halfway to the office when Max said, with a touch of embarrassment:—