Chapter 35 Summary

At the Lower Binfield spike, Paddy and the narrator are staying for the entire weekend. The Tramp Major (the man in charge of herding the tramps) takes a liking to the narrator, giving him his own clean towel in the showers and inviting him to work in the kitchen. In the kitchen, the narrator is shocked to see how much food is thrown away after meals. He helps to throw away five overflowing dustbins of food, knowing that on the other side of the wall the tramps are all still hungry.

The narrator meets a young tramp who claims to have been a carpenter, and he tells the carpenter about all the wasted food. The carpenter contends that they have to throw the food away because if they made the spikes too comfortable, they'd be filled to overflowing, and people would have no...