“To be served one person?”
“To be served one person. I hope you'd have too much self-respect for to let a customer split his order!” said Mr. Feeny.
“I would,—I'd bust his crust,” said Murphy. “Twenty dollars if the eggs is fried on one side, thirty dollars if they're fried on both sides. The extra labor makes this slight difference in price. I would mention, too, that the privilege of shakin' the pepper castor onced on your vittles is five dollars. Rates for more extended service on application.”
“Well, no one has to eat here unless he wants to,” said Mr. Feeny.
“You never said a truer word, Mike Feeny. They can go hungry if they like.”
Now finance is a big subject, but Mr. Feeny and his mates attacked it' with the same energy they would have attacked a bunker of coal, consequently prices performed miracles in the way of change; but as Mr. Feeny had prophesied, they constantly tended higher; also their prevalence was wide-spread; for that red-headed student of political economy resolutely fixed a value to each service and to every necessity.
At first MacCandlish had been disposed to negotiate checks, with the disingenuous intention of later stopping payment on them, but Feeny held out firmly for cash.
“When that's all gone, we'll take over your paper,” he said. “I'm thinkin' of starting a bank for to accommodate it; but as long as your money lasts we'll just keep on doin' a nice cash business.”
And MacCandlish submitted, but with a very bad grace, to what he regarded as the iniquitous exactions of the stokers. Always before when prices had been high, he had directly benefited; indeed, high prices and good times had been synonymous terms with him.
It was an added strain that the castaways were his guests. Under the circumstances it required all that decision of character for which he was rightly famous to suggest that they stop eating. But he pointed out that if they did this, there must come inevitable collapse to Feeny's elaborate commercial system; it was merely a matter of principle, he explained; and early one morning he led his friends to the far end of the island, where they would be remote from temptation and the allurements of the St. Murphy-Feeny.