iss."

"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."

"How _did_ you nearly smash up?" asked Hornby interestedly.

"Oh, I had a run of bad luck. One year the crop was frosted and the next
year I was hailed out. It wants a good deal of capital to stand up
against that."

"That's what happened to me," said Taylor. "I was hailed out and I
hadn't got any capital, so I just had to hire out." He turned suddenly
to Nora. "If it hadn't been for that hail storm you wouldn't have had
the pleasure of makin' my acquaintance."

"How hollow and empty life would have been without that!" she said
ironically.

"I wonder you didn't just quit and start ou