“That’s what I’d like to know,” muttered Ned savagely. “If I knew, I’d wring his neck for him!”
“Have you looked all through the drawer?”
“No. What’s the use? I tell you I know it was in the collar-box.”
“Still, you might have pulled it out, maybe, when you got a collar. I’d look if I were you, Ned.”
So Ned, grumbling, looked, pulling the contents of the top drawer out and then treating the other drawers in the same manner. Afterwards he searched about the table and went through his trunk, and then, Cal egging him on, searched the pockets of his clothes. But the hunt ended fruitlessly save for a forgotten five-cent piece exhumed from the depths of a trousers pocket. This Ned threw across the room peevishly and Cal rescued it from under a bed and laid it sympathetically on the table. Ned, hands in pockets, watched him in scowling silence. Then,
“Don’t you want that too?” he exploded.
Cal looked at him in perplexity, missing the innuendo.
“What?” he asked.
Ned turned away, already regretting his question.