my tub, was very red,
and moist and earnest. His yellow hair curled in little damp ringlets
about his brow. Then he hung his trousers and blouse in the dryers
without wringing them (wringing, he had been told, wrinkled them). He
rinsed and wrung, and flapped the underclothes, though, and shaped his
cap carefully, and spread his leggings, and hung those in the dryer,
too. And finally, with a deep sigh of accomplishment, he filled one of
the bathtubs in the adjoining room--filled it to the slopping-over point
with the luxurious hot water, and he splashed about in this, and
reclined in it, gloriously, until the waiting ones threatened to pull
him out. Then he dried himself and issued forth all flushed and rosy. He
wrapped himself in a clean coarse sheet, for his clothes would not be
dry for another half hour. Swathed in the sheet like a Roman senator he
lay down on one of the green velvet couches, relics of past Pullman
glories, and there, with the rumble and roar of steel trains overhead,
with the smart click of the billiard balls sounding in his ears, with
the phonograph and the electric piano going full blast, with the boys
dancing and larking all about the big room, he fell sound asleep as only
a boy cub can sleep.

When he awoke an hour later his clothes were folded in a neat pile by
the deft hand of some jackie impatient to use the drying space for his
own garments. Tyler put them on. He stood before a mirror and brushed
his hair until it glittered. He drew himself up with the instinctive
pride and self respect that comes of fresh clean clothes against the
skin. Then he placed his absurd round hat on his head at what he
considered a fetching angle, though precarious, and sallied forth on the
streets of Chicago in search of amusement and adventure.

He found them.

Madison and Canal streets, west, had little to offer him. He sensed that
the centre of things lay to the east, so he struck out along Madison,
trying not to show the terror with which the grim, roaring, clamorous
city filled him. He jingled the small coins in his pocket and strode
along, on the surface a blithe and carefree jackie on shore leave; a
forlorn and lonely Texas boy, beneath.

It was late afternoon. His laundering, his ablutions and his nap had
taken more time than he had realised. It was a mild spring day, with
just a Lake Michigan evening snap in the air. Tyler, glancing about
alertly, nevertheless felt dreamy, and restless, and sort of mel