He arrived at Shelly Hot Springs, tired and dusty, on Sunday night.  Joe greeted him exuberantly.  With a wet towel bound about his aching brow, he had been at work all day.

“Part of last week’s washin’ mounted up, me bein’ away to get you,” he explained.  “Your box arrived all right.  It’s in your room.  But it’s a hell of a thing to call a trunk.  An’ what’s in it?  Gold bricks?”

Joe sat on the bed while Martin unpacked.  The box was a packing-case for breakfast food, and Mr. Higginbotham had charged him half a dollar for it.  Two rope handles, nailed on by Martin, had technically transformed it into a trunk eligible for the baggage-car.  Joe watched, with bulging eyes, a few shirts and several changes of underclothes come out of the box, followed by books, and more books.

“Books clean to the bottom?” he asked.

Martin nodded, and went on arranging the books on a kitchen table which served in the room in place of a wash-stand.

“Gee!” Joe exploded, then waited in silence for the deduction to arise in his brain.  At last it came.

“Say, you don’t care for the girls—­much?” he queried.

“No,” was the answer.  “I used to chase a lot before I tackled the books.  But since then there’s no time.”

“And there won’t be any time here.  All you can do is work an’ sleep.”

Martin thought of his five hours’ sleep a night, and smiled.  The room was situated over the laundry and was in the same building with the engine that pumped water, made electricity, and ran the laundry machinery.  The engineer, who occupied the adjoining room, dropped in to meet the new hand and helped Martin rig up an electric bulb, on an extension wire, so that it travelled along a stretched cord from over the table to the bed.

The next morning, at quarter-past six, Martin was routed out for a quarter-to-seven breakfast.  There happened to be a bath-tub for the servants in the laundry building, and he electrified Joe by taking a cold bath.

“Gee, but you’re a hummer!” Joe announced, as they sat down to breakfast in a corner of the hotel kitchen.

With them was the engineer, the gardener, and the assistant gardener, and two or three men from the stable.  They ate hurriedly and gloomily, with but little conversation, and as Martin ate and listened he realized how far he had travelled from their status.  Their small mental caliber was depressing to him, and he was anxious to get away from them.  So he bolted his breakfast, a sickly, sloppy affair, as rapidly as they, and heaved a sigh of relief when he passed out through the kitchen door.