. He hadn't got round to women yet. A good snappy skeleton
of one might of entertained him if he could of dug it up himself and
called it a sedimentary limestone; but he had never trifled with one that
was still in commission and ornamented with flesh and clothes.

And fussy! I wish you could of seen that man's room after he had
carefully unpacked! A place for everything, and he had everything,
too--everything in the world. And if someone switched his soap over to
where his tooth paste belonged it upset his whole day. The Chink never
dared to go into his room after the first morning. Oswald even made his
own bed. Easy to call him an old maid, but I never saw any woman suffer
as much agony in her neatness.

His shoes had to be in a row, and his clothes and hats and caps had to
be in a row, and there was only one hook in the room his pyjamas could
lawfully hang on, and his talcum powder had to stand exactly between
the mosquito dope and the bay rum, which had to be flanked precisely by
his manicure tools and succeeded by something he put on his hair, which
was going the way of all flesh. If some marauder had entered his room in
the night and moved his compass over to where his fountain pen belonged
he would of woke up instantly and screamed.

And then his new wardrobe trunk! This was a great and holy joy that
had come into his bleak life; all new and shiny and complicated, with
a beautiful brass lock, one side for clothes on correct hangers and the
other side full of drawers and compartments and secret recesses, where
he could hide things from himself. It was like a furnished flat, that
trunk. And this was his first adventure out in the great cruel world
with it. He cherished it as a man had ought to cherish his bride.

He had me in to gaze upon it that first afternoon. You'd of thought he
was trying to sell it to me, the way he showed it off. It stood on end,
having a bulge like a watermelon in the top, so no vandal could stand
it up wrong; and it was wide open to show the two insides. He opened up
every room in it, so I could marvel at 'em. He fawned on that trunk. And
at the last he showed me a little brass hook he had screwed into the
side where the clothes hangers was. It was a very important hook. He hung
the keys of the trunk on it; two keys, strung on a cord, and the cord
neatly on the hook. This, he told me, was so the keys would never
get lost.

"I always have a dread I may lose those keys," says he. "That w