“I have been taking a cold bath every day since I got my private bathroom,” said Joshua, with honest pride.

“Then you’re just as dirty as the average Englishman.  He takes a cold bath and fancies he’s clean, when in fact he’s only clean-looking.  Cold water merely stimulates.  It takes warm water and soap to keep a man clean.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Craig, with a docility that flattered Grant as kindly attentions from a fierce-looking dog flatter the timid stranger.

“And you must take care of your clothes, too,” proceeded the arbiter elegantiarum.  “Fold your trousers when you take them off, and have them pressed.  Get your hair cut once a week—­have a regular day for it.  Trim your nails twice a week.  I’ve got you a safety razor.  Shave at least once a day—­first thing after you get out of bed is the best time.  And change your linen every day.  Don’t think because a shirt isn’t downright dirty that you can pass it off for fresh.”

“Just write those things down,” said Josh.  “And any others of the same kind you happen to think of.  I hate to think what a state I’d be in if I hadn’t you.  Don’t imagine I’m not appreciating the self-sacrifice.”

Grant looked sheepish.  But he felt that his shame was unwarranted, that he really deserved Craig’s tactless praise.  So he observed virtuously:  “That’s where we men are beyond the women.  Now, if it were one woman fixing up another, the chances are a thousand to one she’d play the cat, and get clothes and give suggestions that’d mean ruin.”

It may not speak well for Arkwright’s capacity for emotion, but it certainly speaks well for his amiability and philanthropy that doing these things for Craig had so far enlisted him that he was almost as anxious as the fluttered and flustered bridegroom himself for the success of the adventure.  He wished he could go along, in disguise, as a sort of valet and prime minister—­to be ever near Josh to coach and advise and guide him.  For it seemed to him that success or failure in this honeymooning hung upon the success or failure of Craig in practising the precepts that for Grant and his kind take precedence of the moral code.  He spent an earnest and exhausting hour in neatly and carefully writing out the instructions, as Craig had requested.  He performed this service with a gravity that would move some people to the same sort of laughter and wonder that is excited by the human doings of a trained chimpanzee.  But Craig—­the wild man, the arch foe of effeteness, the apostle of the simple life of yarn sock and tallowed boot and homespun pants and hairy jaw—­Craig accepted the service with heartfelt thanks in his shaking voice and moist eye.