crutches," he said. "I've got to go. They've let me sleep
here all night. They didn't turn me into the street. I don't know why
they didn't. Marco's father--he's the right sort. He looks like a
swell."

"The Master," said Lazarus, with a rigid manner, "the Master is a great
gentleman. He would turn no tired creature into the street. He and
his son are poor, but they are of those who give. He desires to see and
talk to you again. You are to have bread and coffee with him and the
young Master. But it is I who tell you that you cannot sit at table
with them until you are clean. Come with me," and he handed him his
crutches. His manner was authoritative, but it was the manner of a
soldier; his somewhat stiff and erect movements were those of a
soldier, also, and The Rat liked them because they made him feel as if
he were in barracks. He did not know what was going to happen, but he
got up and followed him on his crutches.

Lazarus took him to a closet under the stairs where a battered tin bath
was already full of hot water, which the old soldier himself had
brought in pails. There were soap and coarse, clean towels on a wooden
chair, and also there was a much worn but cleanly suit of clothes.

"Put these on when you have bathed," Lazarus ordered, pointing to them.
"They belong to the young Master and will be large for you, but they
will be better than your own." And then he went out of the closet and
shut the door.

It was a new experience for The Rat. So long as he remembered, he had
washed his face and hands--when he had washed them at all--at an iron
tap set in the wall of a back street or court in some slum. His father
and himself had long ago sunk into the world where to wash one's self
is not a part of every-day life. They had lived amid dirt and foulness,
and when his father had been in a maudlin state, he had sometimes cried
and talked of the long-past days when he had shaved every morning and
put on a clean shirt.

To stand even in the most battered of tin baths full of clean hot water
and to splash and scrub with a big piece of flannel and plenty of soap
was a marvelous thing. The Rat's tired body responded to the novelty
with a curious feeling of freshness and comfort.

"I dare say swells do this every day," he muttered. "I'd do it myself
if I was a swell. Soldiers have to keep themselves so clean they
shine."

When, after making the most of his soap and water, he came out of the
close