"I'm from the finest state in the Union. The most glorious state in the—"
"H'm—Texas," grinned Red Cap.
"How did you know!"
"Ah done heah 'em talk befoh, son. Ah done heah 'em talk be-foh."
It was a long journey through the great building to the section that had been set aside for Tyler and boys like him. Tyler wondered how any one could ever find it alone. When the Red Cap left him, after showing him the wash rooms, the tubs for scrubbing clothes, the steam dryers, the bath-tubs, the lunch room, Tyler looked after him regretfully. Then he sped after him and touched him on the arm.
"Listen. Could I—would they—do you mean I could clean up in there—as much as I wanted? And wash my things? And take a bath in a bathtub, with all the hot water I want?"
"Yo' sho' kin. On'y things look mighty grabby now. Always is Sat'days. Jes' wait aroun' an' grab yo' tu'n."
Tyler waited. And while he waited he watched to see how the other boys did things. He saw how they scrubbed their uniforms with scrubbing brushes, and plenty of hot water and soap. He saw how they hung them carefully, so that they might not wrinkle, in the dryers. He saw them emerge, glowing, from the tub rooms. And he waited, the fever of cleanliness burning in his eye.
His turn came. He had waited more than an hour, reading, listening to the phonograph and the electric piano, and watching.
Now he saw his chance and seized it. And then he went through a ceremony that was almost a ritual. Stella Kamps, could she have seen it, would have felt repaid for all her years of soap-and-water insistence.