A man who sat reading a newspaper in the corner looked up sharply.
"Hello, there! what's wanted?"

"Just dropped in to wish you good night, Jimmy," said Lemuel's mate.

"You clear out!" said the man good-humouredly, as if to an old
acquaintance, who must not be allowed to presume upon his
familiarity.

"All right, Jimmy," said the boy. He set his left hand horizontally
on its wrist at his left shoulder and cut the air with it in playful
menace as the man dropped his eyes again to his paper. "They're all
just so, in this house," he explained to Lemuel. "No nonsense, but
good-natured. _They're_ all right. They know me."

He mounted two flights of stairs in front of Lemuel to a corridor,
where an attendant stood examining the numbers on the brass checks
hung around tramps' necks as they came up with their shoes in their
hands. He instructed them that the numbers corresponded to the cots
they were to occupy, as well as the hooks where their clothes hung.
Some of them seemed hardly able to master the facts. They looked
wistfully, like cowed animals, into his face as he made the case
clear.

Two vast rooms, exquisitely clean, like the whole house, opened on
the right and left of the corridor, and presented long phalanxes of
cots, each furnished with two coarse blankets, a quilt, and a thin
pillow.