“Has my beer come? Hey, there, Kuno”—this to the Jap, who was grinning in the doorway. “Bring me some of my beer! Bring me a bucketful—a tubful. By Jees, I brought some in my car—I wouldn’t take a chance. Did you hear what happened to Pete O’Reilly? Damn fool tried to come across the border with a crate of whiskey in his car; told me it cost him a hundred dollars a quart before he got through! Christ amighty, Verne, how do you stand this?” “Well, for one thing, I drink lemonade instead of beer.” This was a reform which Bunny had imposed upon his father, and now Dad was very proud of it. “No pop for me!” said Verne. “By Jees, I’ll have my suds in the bath-tub. Any women about, Verne?” And Mr. Roscoe kicked off his shoes and his trousers, and sat himself under an electric fan. “The damn thing blows hot air!” he said; and then he looked at Bunny. “Well, here’s our boy Bolsheviki! Where’s the red flag?” Now Bunny was expecting to reach the impressive age of twenty-one in a month or two, and he had heard all possible variations on this “Bolsheviki” joke. But he was host, and had to smile. “I see you read the papers.” “Say, kiddo, you made the front page all right! It did me a lot of good in some negotiations. Come down to the office and I’ll introduce you to a Soviet commissar in disguise; they’re trying to sell me a concession in the Urals. ‘Where the hell is that?’ I says; but it seems there is really such a place, unless they have forged some atlases. The guy started to pull this brotherhood of man stuff on me, and I says, ‘Sure, I’m great on that dope,’ I says. ‘The junior member of our firm is in the business! Look at this, by Jees,’ and I showed him the papers, and we’ve been ‘Tovarish’ ever since!” III Well, Tovarish Roscoe went to bed, in Nile green silk pajamas on a cot out in the court alongside the fountain; and at five in the morning they woke him, so that he might go out with Dad and the geologist and the engineer, to O. K. the plans for the Bandy tract. He came back with the sunrise in his eyes, puffing and snorting, and yelling for beer instead of breakfast, and how would he get some more when this gave out? They persuaded him that he must not try to cross the desert until the sun went down, so he and Dad and Bunny retired into the living-room, and shut all the doors and windows, to stick it out as best they could.