Hom Hing pushed his wife behind him and addressed the lawyer again: “I might try,” said he, “to raise something; but five hundred—it is not possible.”
“What about four?”
“I tell you I have next to nothing left and my friends are not rich.”
“Very well!”
The lawyer moved leisurely[leisurely] toward the door, pausing on its threshold to light a cigarette.
“Stop, white man; white man, stop!”
Lae Choo, panting and terrified, had started forward and now stood beside him, clutching his sleeve excitedly.
“You say you can go to get paper to bring my Little One to me if Hom Hing give you five hundred dollars?”
The lawyer nodded carelessly; his eyes were intent upon the cigarette which would not take the fire from the match.
“Then you go get paper. If Hom Hing not can give you five hundred dollars—I give you perhaps what more that much.”