But Martin made no answer.  A few more drinks, and in his brain he felt the maggots of intoxication beginning to crawl.  Ah, it was living, the first breath of life he had breathed in three weeks.  His dreams came back to him.  Fancy came out of the darkened room and lured him on, a thing of flaming brightness.  His mirror of vision was silver-clear, a flashing, dazzling palimpsest of imagery.  Wonder and beauty walked with him, hand in hand, and all power was his.  He tried to tell it to Joe, but Joe had visions of his own, infallible schemes whereby he would escape the slavery of laundry-work and become himself the owner of a great steam laundry.

“I tell yeh, Mart, they won’t be no kids workin’ in my laundry—­not on yer life.  An’ they won’t be no workin’ a livin’ soul after six P.M.  You hear me talk!  They’ll be machinery enough an’ hands enough to do it all in decent workin’ hours, an’ Mart, s’help me, I’ll make yeh superintendent of the shebang—­the whole of it, all of it.  Now here’s the scheme.  I get on the water-wagon an’ save my money for two years—­save an’ then—­”

But Martin turned away, leaving him to tell it to the barkeeper, until that worthy was called away to furnish drinks to two farmers who, coming in, accepted Martin’s invitation.  Martin dispensed royal largess, inviting everybody up, farm-hands, a stableman, and the gardener’s assistant from the hotel, the barkeeper, and the furtive hobo who slid in like a shadow and like a shadow hovered at the end of the bar.

CHAPTER XVIII

Monday morning, Joe groaned over the first truck load of clothes to the washer.

“I say,” he began.

“Don’t talk to me,” Martin snarled.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” he said at noon, when they knocked off for dinner.

Tears came into the other’s eyes.

“That’s all right, old man,” he said.  “We’re in hell, an’ we can’t help ourselves.  An’, you know, I kind of like you a whole lot.  That’s what made it—­hurt.  I cottoned to you from the first.”

Martin shook his hand.

“Let’s quit,” Joe suggested.  “Let’s chuck it, an’ go hoboin’.  I ain’t never tried it, but it must be dead easy.  An’ nothin’ to do.  Just think of it, nothin’ to do.  I was sick once, typhoid, in the hospital, an’ it was beautiful.  I wish I’d get sick again.”

The week dragged on.  The hotel was full, and extra “fancy starch” poured in upon them.  They performed prodigies of valor.  They fought late each night under the electric lights, bolted their meals, and even got in a half hour’s work before breakfast.  Martin no longer took his cold baths.  Every moment was drive, drive, drive, and Joe was the masterful shepherd of moments, herding them carefully, never losing one, counting them over like a miser counting gold, working on in a frenzy, toil-mad, a feverish machine, aided ably by that other machine that thought of itself as once having been one Martin Eden, a man.