"I don't know, sir—that's what he called it—something the perfesser has him fix out of cereals and nuts and sour milk. That's all they have, sir; and they don't have no cooking, for the perfesser says it breaks the celluloid—"
"Cellular," corrected Billings.
"Maybe so, sir," demurred Jenkins. "He said celluloid—the celluloid tissue papers, he called it. And then his having no heat on all winter and the windows kept open all the time and the snow piling up on his bed at night kept him with colds all the year. And then, there was the dampness—"
"That's it, the dampness!" I exclaimed. "Tell him."
"Why, sir, he told me that every night he had to turn down the perfesser's bed and go all over it with a two-gallon watering can—"
"Watering can!" gasped Billings.
"I'm telling you what he says, sir. Then he covers it all up again, and in about a half-hour the perfesser turns the covers down; and if it's what he calls 'fine'—that is, damp all over—he climbs in and sleeps like a top."
"Cold-water bug, you know," I explained, but Billings shrugged his shoulders.
"That's all right. Bug or not, he's the goods, all the same. Greatest ever." He spoke with quiet conviction.
He deliberated a moment and turned to me.