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 gall