“This is hell, ain’t it?” Joe remarked once.

Martin nodded, but felt a rasp of irritation.  The statement had been obvious and unnecessary.  They did not talk while they worked.  Conversation threw them out of their stride, as it did this time, compelling Martin to miss a stroke of his iron and to make two extra motions before he caught his stride again.

On Friday morning the washer ran.  Twice a week they had to put through hotel linen,—­the sheets, pillow-slips, spreads, table-cloths, and napkins.  This finished, they buckled down to “fancy starch.”  It was slow work, fastidious and delicate, and Martin did not learn it so readily.  Besides, he could not take chances.  Mistakes were disastrous.

“See that,” Joe said, holding up a filmy corset-cover that he could have crumpled from view in one hand.  “Scorch that an’ it’s twenty dollars out of your wages.”

So Martin did not scorch that, and eased down on his muscular tension, though nervous tension rose higher than ever, and he listened sympathetically to the other’s blasphemies as he toiled and suffered over the beautiful things that women wear when they do not have to do their own laundrying.  “Fancy starch” was Martin’s nightmare, and it was Joe’s, too.  It was “fancy starch” that robbed them of their hard-won minutes.  They toiled at it all day.  At seven in the evening they broke off to run the hotel linen through the mangle.  At ten o’clock, while the hotel guests slept, the two laundrymen sweated on at “fancy starch” till midnight, till one, till two.  At half-past two they knocked off.

Saturday morning it was “fancy starch,” and odds and ends, and at three in the afternoon the week’s work was done.

“You ain’t a-goin’ to ride them seventy miles into Oakland on top of this?” Joe demanded, as they sat on the stairs and took a triumphant smoke.

“Got to,” was the answer.

“What are you goin’ for?—­a girl?”

“No; to save two and a half on the railroad ticket.  I want to renew some books at the library.”

“Why don’t you send ’em down an’ up by express?  That’ll cost only a quarter each way.”

Martin considered it.

“An’ take a rest to-morrow,” the other urged.  “You need it.  I know I do.  I’m plumb tuckered out.”

He looked it.  Indomitable, never resting, fighting for seconds and minutes all week, circumventing delays and crushing down obstacles, a fount of resistless energy, a high-driven human motor, a demon for work, now that he had accomplished the week’s task he was in a state of collapse.  He was worn and haggard, and his handsome face drooped in lean exhaustion.  He pulled his cigarette spiritlessly, and his voice was peculiarly dead and monotonous.  All the snap and fire had gone out of him.  His triumph seemed a sorry one.

“An’ next week we got to do it all over again,” he said sadly.  “An’ what’s the good of it all, hey?  Sometimes I wish I was a hobo.  They don’t work, an’ they get their livin’.  Gee!  I wish I had a glass of beer; but I can’t get up the gumption to go down to the village an’ get it.  You’ll stay over, an’ send your books dawn by express, or else you’re a damn fool.”