We three climbed to the bath-room. “Wait a minute,” said the Amphibian. He disappeared. I opened my eyes, for this creature spake with a voice of authority. The box-car scalawag grinned sheepishly. There was a scuffling overhead, a scratch and a rumble. We two looked up just in time to dodge the astonishing vision of a clothes-horse descending through a trap-door by a rope. At the upper end of the rope was the absurd bald head of our newly achieved superintendent. “Hello, Santy Claus,” said the box-car tramp. “Whose Christmas present is this?” The Frog shouted: “Put your shoes and hats in the corner. If you have any tobacco, put it in your shoes. Hang everything else on the clothes-horse.” I obeyed, except that I had no tobacco. The rascal by my side had a plenty, and sawdusted the bath-room floor with some of it, and the remainder went into his foot-gear. Then we two, companions in nakedness, watched the Frog haul up our clothes out of sight. He closed the trap-door with many grunts. Then this Amphibian, this boss, descended and entered the bath-room. He was a dry-land Amphibian. He had never taken a bath himself, but was there to superintend. He seemed to feel himself the accredited representative of all the good people behind the mission, and no doubt he was. “Can it be possible,” I asked myself, “that they have chosen this creature to apply their Christianity?” The Frog said to my companion: “Git in the tub.” Then he turned on the water, regulated the temperature, and watched as though he expected one of us to steal the faucets from the wash-bowl. He threw a gruesome rag at the tramp, and allowed him to scrub himself. The creature bathing seemed well-disposed toward the idea, and had put soap on about one-third of his person when the Frog shouted: “I’ve got to get up at four-thirty.” The scalawag took the hint and rose like Venus from the foam. He splashed off part of it, and rubbed off the rest with a towel that was a fallen sister of the wash-rag. The Frog was evidently trying to enforce, in a literal way, regulations he did not understand. He wiped out the bath-tub most carefully with the unclean wash-rag. Then he provided the scalawag with a shirt for night-wear. The creature put it on and said:-- “Ain’t I a peach?” He was. The nightie was an old, heavily-starched dress-shirt, once white. Maybe it had once been worn by the Scribe or the Pharisee. But it had not been washed since. The rascal cut quite a figure as he took long steps down the corridor to bed, piloted by the hurrying Amphibian. He was a long-legged rascal, and the slivered remainders of that ancient shirt flapped about him gloriously. I was hustled into the tub after the rascal. I was supervised after the same manner. “Now wash,” boomed the Amphibian. He threw at me the sloppy rag of my predecessor. I threw it promptly on the floor. “I don’t use a wash-rag,” I said.