Once more in familiar and comfortable environment, even Hapgood for the moment forgot to be miserable, and as he smoked a good cigarette and watched the water running into the tub now and then hummed a Broadway air.  As for Conniston, his serene good nature under most circumstances, his greatest asset in the small frays he had had with the world, was untroubled by a spot.

“How do you like the West, Roger?” he called, banteringly.

“Something like, eh, Greek?” Hapgood laughed back.  “Do you know, I believe I’ll stay!  And the dame, isn’t she some class, eh?”

He finished his bath finally, and at last emerged, half dressed, to lounge in the big chair while his friend took his plunge.  He heard Conniston singing to the obligato of the running water, and, with eyes half closed, leaned back and watched his smoke swirl ceilingward.  Presently the bath-room door opened again, and he saw Conniston, his trousers in his hand, standing in the doorway, grinning as though at some rare laughter-provoking thought.

“Well, old man,” Hapgood smiled back at him, “whence the mirth?”

Conniston chuckled gleefully.

“Another joke, Roger, my boy!  I wonder when the Fates are going to drop us in order to give their undivided attention to some other lucky mortals?  You know that twenty-seven dollars and sixty cents?”

“Well?”

“I’ve lost it!” Conniston laughed outright as his ready imagination depicted amusing complications ahead.  “Every blamed cent of it!”

“What!” Hapgood was upon his feet, staring.  Hapgood’s complacency was a thing of the past.

Conniston nodded, his grin still with him.

“Every cent of it!  And here we are the Lord knows how far from home—­”

“Have you looked through all your pockets?”

“Every one.  And I found—­”

“What?”

“A hole,” chuckled Conniston.  “Just a hole, and nothing more.”

Hapgood jerked the trousers from the shaking hand of the man whom such a catastrophe could move to laughter, and made a hurried search.

“What the devil are we going to do?” he gasped, when there was at last no doubting the truth.

Conniston shrugged.  “I haven’t had time to figure out that part of it.  Haven’t you any money?”

“About seven dollars,” snapped Hapgood.  “And a long time that will keep the two of us.  It’s up to you, Greek!”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that you’ve got to wire your dad for money.  There’s nothing left to do.  Dang it!” he finished, bitterly, throwing the empty trousers back to Conniston, “I was a fool to ever come with you.”

“You’ve said that before.  But”—­his good humor still tickled by his loss, which he refused to take seriously in spite of the drawn face staring into his—­“I haven’t even the money to wire the old gent!”

“Oh, I’ll pay for it.”

“I didn’t want to do it so soon,” Conniston hesitated.  “But it begins to look as though—­”