The nightie was an old, heavily-starched dress-shirt, once white. Maybe it had once been worn by the Scribe or the Pharisee. But it had not been washed since. The rascal cut quite a figure as he took long steps down the corridor to bed, piloted by the hurrying Amphibian. He was a long-legged rascal, and the slivered remainders of that ancient shirt flapped about him gloriously.
I was hustled into the tub after the rascal. I was supervised after the same manner. “Now wash,” boomed the Amphibian. He threw at me the sloppy rag of my predecessor.
I threw it promptly on the floor.
“I don’t use a wash-rag,” I said.
“Hurry,” croaked the Frog. And he let the water out of the tub. He handed me the towel the scalawag had used. I had not, as a matter of fact, had a bath, and I was quite foot-sore.
“I do not want that towel,” I said.
“You’re awful fancy, aren’t you?” sneered the Frog.
Wherever I was damp, I rubbed myself dry with my bare hands, being skilled in the matter, meanwhile reflecting that there is nothing worse than a Pharisee except a creature like this. I wondered if it was too late to rouse a mob among the better element of the town, neither saints nor sinners, but just plain malefactors of great wealth, and have this person lynched. There were probably multi-millionnaires in this town giving ten-dollar bills to this mission, who were imagining they were giving a free bath to somebody.
I wanted to appeal to some man with manicured hands who had grown decently rich robbing the widow and the orphan and who now had the leisure to surround himself with the appurtenances of civility and the manners of a Chesterfield.
“I am through with the poor but honest submerged tenth. Rich worldlings for mine,” I muttered.