"I'd rather starve or drown myself," said Loveland, turning red, and then white.
"It's nasty, starving," ventured Bill. "And folks are that interfering, they're always fishing you out of the water and puttin' you into the newspapers as a Case. Besides, what's the odds? If you've got any swagger friends, they ain't likely to come nosin' round here. Alexander's is 'great,' but it ain't swell."
Loveland had shuddered at the thought of the steerage, when Bill suggested it a few moments ago, but now it seemed to him that the "horrors of the middle passage" would be heaven to the humiliations he endured. For fifteen dollars, Bill said, he could get back to England. If Alexander would give him five dollars a week, in three weeks he could be off—or say, four, having paid Bill what he owed. But, no, that was an eternity—not to be endured. At bay and desperate Val determined to strike high.
"Tell your father who I am, then," he exclaimed, "but say he can't have me for any beggarly two-fifty, or even five dollars a week. I'll have ten, or nothing."
Isidora looked at him with respect, and dashed away behind the curtain. Neither man spoke. The sound of her little high-heeled slippers, clicking on the uncarpeted stairs, was sharp in their ears. In three minutes—before Loveland had had time to repent—she was down again.
"Pa says 'Done,'" she panted. "He's going to use you for all you're worth."
"I bet he will," murmured Bill, sotto voce. But neither he nor Loveland guessed in what way Alexander the Great meant to make the "swell waiter" worth his wage.