“Back again, are you, Harry?” he said, hoisting himself with an effort out of the deep gulf of the reveries.
“Same day; same afternoon. And I’ve made a discovery. The railroads, two of them, have been creeping up since we were here before. There are night trains. What do you say to ordering an early dinner and shaking the slush of this metropolis from our muddy feet?”
“It suits me perfectly. There are sleeping-cars?”
“There are; and I have engaged a couple of berths. I’m beginning to long for the flesh-pots; otherwise the comforts of a not-too-crowded Denver hotel. Shall we go and eat a pasty or so and gird ourselves for the flitting? Or has the piece of money paper you got a while back killed your appetite?”
Philip did not reply until they were entering the dining-room together. Then he said, quite as if there had been no interval between question and answer: “It runs in my mind that money breeds many more appetites than it kills. You ought to paste that saying in your hat, Harry.”
“I?” laughed the play-boy. “What about yourself?”
“I told you once that I hadn’t come to Colorado to make a fool of myself.”
Bromley laughed again.
“If all mankind were only as virtuous and impeccable as you think you are, Philip, what a Paradise we’d be living in! Let’s take that table for two over in the alcove; then we won’t have to mix and mingle with the plebeian crowd and run the risk of having some of the virtues rubbed off of us.”
The dinner which was presently served was too appetizing to encourage any more than desultory conversation, and it was not until after the black coffee had been brought in that Bromley said: “By the way, I wonder what has become of Big Jim?”