go was their goal. They were like
a horde of play-hungry devils after their confinement. Six weeks of
restricted freedom, six weeks of stored-up energy made them restive as
colts.

"Goin' to Chicago, kid?" Moran asked him, carelessly. It was Saturday
morning.

"Yes. Are you?" eagerly.

"Kin a duck swim?"

At the Y.M.C.A. they had given him tickets to various free amusements
and entertainments. They told him about free canteens, and about other
places where you could get a good meal, cheap. One of the tickets was
for a dance. Tyler knew nothing of dancing. This dance was to be given
at some kind of woman's club on Michigan Boulevard. Tyler read the card,
glumly. A dance meant girls. He knew that. Why hadn't he learned to
dance?

Tyler walked down to the station and waited for the train that would
bring him to Chicago at about one o'clock. The other boys, in little
groups, or in pairs, were smoking and talking. Tyler wanted to join
them, but he did not. They seemed so sufficient unto themselves,
with their plans, and their glib knowledge of places, and amusements,
and girls. On the train they all bought sweets from the train
butcher--chocolate maraschinos, and nut bars, and molasses kisses--and
ate them as greedily as children, until their hunger for sweets was
surfeited.

Tyler found himself in the same car with Moran. He edged over to a
seat near him, watching him narrowly. Moran was not mingling with the
other boys. He kept aloof, his sea-blue eyes gazing out at the flat
Illinois prairie. All about him swept and eddied the currents and
counter-currents of talk.

"They say there's a swell supper in the Tower Building for fifty cents."

"Fifty nothing. Get all you want in the Library canteen for nix."

"Where's this dance, huh?"

"Search _me_."

"Heh, Murph! I'll shoot you a game of pool at the club."

"Naw, I gotta date."

Tyler's glance encountered Moran's, and rested there. Scorn curled the
Irishman's broad upper lip. "Navy! This ain't no navy no more. It's a
Sunday school, that's what! Phonographs, an' church suppers, an' pool
an' dances! It's enough t' turn a fella's stomick. Lot of Sunday school
kids don't know a sail from a tablecloth when they see it."

He relapsed into contemptuous silence.

Tyler, who but a moment before had been envying them their familiarity
with these very things now nodded and smiled understanding at Moran.
"That's right," he said. Moran regarded him a moment, curiously