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. Then he resumed his staring out of the window. You would never have guessed that in that bullet head there was bewilderment and resentment almost equalling Tyler's, but for a much different reason. Gunner Moran was of the old navy—the navy that had been despised and spat upon. In those days his uniform alone had barred him from decent theatres, decent halls, decent dances, contact with decent people. They had forced him to a knowledge of the burlesque houses, the cheap theatres, the shooting galleries, the saloons, the dives. And now, bewilderingly, the public had right-about faced. It opened its doors to him. It closed its saloons to him. It sought him out. It offered him amusement. It invited him to its home, and sat him down at its table, and introduced him to its daughter.