“In some unaccountable way,” said Quarles, “Squeem managed to get a decent preparatory education in the South, in a place where most of the people lived in huts. Missionary education, I think. However, he came here, passed entrance exams all right, and was awarded a couple of scholarships that bring him in about a hundred and fifty dollars a year. He tells me that he manages to get enough work to support him: that he earns his room rent with the Gibboneys by doing chores, though what chores such a poor family can have for him to perform, I cannot understand. He cooks his own meals on an oil stove, and, for that purpose tries never to go over seventy-five cents a week for his food. As for clothes, well--he patronizes ‘Eddie’, the old clothes-man, and manages to get cast-off shoes and clothes at ridiculously low prices. A suit for four dollars and a decent pair of shoes, not much worn, for fifty cents!” “I must have seen him,” I explained, “but of course, I cannot place the name. A queer one, too; reminds one of Dickens’ Squeers, the ugly schoolmaster.” Quarles smiled. “That name was tacked on a year ago, when he was a Freshman. It seems that he kept himself to his room and never mixed in things, sort of a timid, bashful chap, but full of energy when it comes to study. A down-at-the-heels fellow, I have heard him called. Well, he was squeamish about everything, and it was natural for the Freshies to tack him with ‘Squeem’ and by that name he will always be known to the future generations of college men.” “Here’s the alley!” I announced, after a few minutes more of talk. We had passed down an outlying road where, on the very outskirts of the village, stood a row of cheap tenements. Between these, at an angle, lay an alley filled with ashes, tin cans and broken bottles. This alley led up to two ill-looking shanties, so small that by comparison with the houses farther in the town they seemed no more than half-ruined doll houses. “It’s the blackest house,” whispered my companion. “Go around to the rear. His room is up the back stairs.” As we rounded the black shanty the sound of gurgling and churning reached our ears, and then, back of a line of flapping, wet clothes, we came on a middle-sized, but excessively gaunt youth, wearing an oil-cloth apron, such as we wore in the chemistry classes when we performed experiments, with a bib that fitted close to his neck. He wore under it a ragged, red sweater, and was churning a washing machine full of clothes, while, at his back, a stout, red-faced Irishwoman was engaged in taking clothes from a basket and hanging them on lines. Hanging from a row of nails on the outside of the house were all shades and colors of students’ laundry bags. Underneath them, wriggling in a broken and dirty clothes basket, lay a six-months-old baby, sucking a soiled thumb and apparently finding it nourishing.