They were duly shocked, of course, and they looked unutterable horror while he went into the tent and brought out the major.Still in the same sneering manner, laying particular stress on the 'business,' he brought my case before the commanding officer.The major was of a different stamp of man.I liked him as soon as I saw him, and to him I stated my case in the same fashion as before.
'Didn't you know you had to stay for services?' he asked.
'Certainly not,' I answered, 'or I should have gone without my breakfast.You have no placards posted to that effect, nor was I so informed when I entered the place.'
He meditated a moment.'You can go,' he said.
It was twelve o'clock when I gained the street, and I couldn't quite make up my mind whether I had been in the army or in prison.The day was half gone, and it was a far fetch to Stepney.And besides, it was Sunday, and why should even a starving man look for work on Sunday? Furthermore, it was my judgment that I had done a hard night's work walking the streets, and a hard day's work getting my breakfast; so I disconnected myself from my working hypothesis of a starving young man in search of employment, hailed a bus, and climbed aboard.
After a shave and a bath, with my clothes all off, I got in between clean white sheets and went to sleep.It was six in the evening when I closed my eyes.When they opened again, the clocks were striking nine next morning.I had slept fifteen straight hours.And as I lay there drowsily, my mind went back to the seven hundred unfortunates I had left waiting for services.No bath, no shave for them, no clean white sheets and all clothes off, and fifteen hours straight sleep.Services over, it was the weary streets again, the problem of a crust of bread ere night, and the long sleepless night in the streets, and the pondering of the problem of how to obtain a crust at dawn.