"All right. Well, Miles, you was askin' how the house is patronised. I'll tell 'ee. They make up about two hundred an' twenty beds in it altogether, an' these are chock-full a'most every night. One way or another they had forty-four thousand men, more or less, as slep' under this roof last year--so I've bin told. That's patronisin', ain't it? To say nothin' o' the fellers as comes for--grub, which, as you've found, is good for the money, and the attendants is civil. You see, they're always kind an' attentive here, 'cause they professes to think more of our souls than our bodies--which we've no objection to, d'ee see, for the lookin' arter our souls includes the lookin' arter our bodies! An' they don't bother us in no way to attend their Bible-readin's an' sitchlike. There they are in separate rooms; if you want 'em you may go; if you don't, you can let 'em alone. No compulsion, which comes quite handy to some on us, for I don't myself care much about sitchlike things. So long's my body's all right, I leaves my soul to look arter itself." As the seaman said this with a good-natured smile of indifference, there sprang to the mind of his young companion words that had often been impressed on him by his mother: "What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" but he made no reference to this at the time. "Hows'ever," continued Molloy, "as they don't worrit us about religion, except to give us a good word an' a blessin' now an' again, and may-hap a little book to read, we all patronises the house; an it's my opinion, if it was twice as big as it is, we'd fill it chock-full. I would board as well as sleep in it myself--for it's full o' conveniences, sitch as lockers to putt our things in, an' baths, and what not, besides all the other things I've mentioned--but the want o' drink staggers me. I can't git along without a drop o' drink." Miles thought that his nautical friend appeared to be unable to get along without a good many drops of drink, but he was too polite to say so. "Man alive!" continued Jack Molloy, striking his huge fist on his thigh with emphasis; "it's a wonderful place is this _Welcome_! An' it's a lively place too. Why, a fellow hanged his-self in one o' the bunks overhead not long ago." "You don't mean that?" exclaimed Miles, rather shocked. "In course I does. But they heard 'im gaspin', an cut him down in time to save him. It was drink they say as made him do it, and they got him to sign the pledge arterwards. I believe he's kep' it too. Leastwise I know many a hard drinker as have bin indooced to give it up and stuck to it--all through comin' here to have a snooze in a comfortable hunk. They give the bunks names--cubicles they calls 'em in the lump. Separately, there's the `Commodore Goodenough Cot,' an' the `Little Nellie Cot,' an' the `Sunshine Cot'--so called 'cause it hain't got a port-hole to let in the daylight at all; and the `Billy Rough 'un'--" "The what?"