eanliness of the corridor, as always, heartened
Prestonby a little; it was a trophy of victory from his first two days
at Mineola High School, three years ago. He remembered what they had
looked like when he had first seen them.

"This school is a pig pen!" he had barked at the janitorial force.
"And even if they are Illiterates, these children aren't pigs; they
deserve decent surroundings. This school will be cleaned, immediately,
from top to bottom, and it'll be kept that way."

The janitors, all political appointees, Independent-Conservative
party-hacks, secure in their jobs, had laughed derisively. The
building superintendent, without troubling to rise, had answered him:

"Young man, you don't want to get off on the wrong foot, here," he had
said. "This here's the way this school's always been run, an' it's
gonna take a lot more than you to change it."

The fellow's name, he recalled, was Kettner; Lancedale had given him
a briefing which had included some particulars about him. He was an
Independent-Conservative ward-committeeman. He had gotten his present
job after being fired from his former position as mailman for
listening to other peoples' mail with his pocket recorder-reproducer.

"Yetsko," he had said. "Kick this bum out on his face."

"You can't get away with--" Kettner had begun. Yetsko had yanked him
out of his chair with one hand and started for the door with him.

"Just a moment, Yetsko," he had said.

Thinking that he was backing down, they had all begun grinning at him.

"Don't bother opening the door," he had said. "Just kick him out."

After the third kick, Kettner had gotten the door open, himself; the
fourth kick sent him across the hall to the opposite wall. He pulled
himself to his feet and limped away, never to return. The next
morning, the school was spotless. It had stayed that way.

Beside him, Yetsko must also have returned mentally to the past.

"Looks better now than it did when we first saw it, captain," he said.

"Yes. It didn't take us as long to clean up this mess as it did to
clean up that mutinous guards company in Pittsburgh. But when we
cleaned that up, it stayed cleaned. This is like trying to bail out a
boat with a pitchfork."

"Yeah. I wish we'dda stayed in Pittsburgh, captain. I wish we'd never
seen this place!"

"So do I!" Prestonby agreed, heartily.

No, he didn't, either. If he'd never have come to Mineola High School,
he'd never have found Claire Pelton.