"Bill, I can't stand this any longer. I shall have to work or steal—anything but borrow more—until I can touch my money," Loveland broke out, when Blinkey had disappeared behind the red curtain and was being harangued in the distance by big Dick.
"It ain't easy to do either in New York," said Bill, mildly.
"To think of my being practically reduced to starvation and nakedness, with a letter of credit for a hundred and fifty pounds in my pocket!" groaned Val. "Do you think old Alexander would advance me anything if I told him my whole story?"
"Oh, I guess I wouldn't tell him the story," Bill advised, hastily.
"Why not?"
"Well, he's got a sharp tongue, Alexander has."
"In England such a fellow could only get at me at all through my servants."
"I—suppose so," agreed Bill, gently. "But this ain't England."
"I should think it wasn't, worse luck."
"You do have bad luck," said Bill. "But 'twouldn't change it if you asked Alexander for a loan on that letter of credit. If he said anything fit for publication, he'd only say, if the bank wouldn't accommodate you, he wouldn't; and what the dickens did you take him for? When I want a quarter before it's due, it's like gettin' milk out of a corkscrew; and the one thing he thinks of, is whether I shall get run over by an automobile before I work out the money next morning. Oh, I know Alexander."