"I take dat out of your wages," said Alexander, loudly enough to be heard by those who sat round the table near to the curtained door.
"Of course," replied Loveland, his voice steady.
"I shouldn't have thought the British aristocracy would have such clumsy ways," Leo Cohen remarked audibly to Isidora. Then, calling jocularly across the room, "Say Alexander, got any mock turtle soup tonight?"
"Thought you might be makin' a speciality of it this week," went on Cohen.
"Oh, cute idea for an advertisement: 'Mock Turtle served by Mock Marquis.'"
A titter went round the room among those who had enough English to understand the joke, and there was even a faint, suppressed sound of laughter at Mrs. Milton's table.
Loveland turned white. He had an impulse to hurl the broken dishes, now collected on the tray, straight at Cohen's oiled black head; and a week ago he would have done so without stopping to reflect. But he had lived longer in six days since landing in New York than in as many years before; and he was learning a lesson which no one had even tried to teach him in the past; mastery of himself.
He knew that if he took violent revenge upon the insolent young Jew, his late shipmates and their friends would delight in the exhibition. They would think that they were getting their money's worth out of the show, and Loveland determined not to play mountebank for their entertainment.
Pale, but perfectly composed in appearance, he did not even look towards Cohen, and seemed to take no more notice of the young man's impertinence than of the barking of some mongrel dog, too feeble to be kicked.
Ardently Loveland longed to get out of the room and to stay out, but though he could have escaped by carrying the broken dishes into the kitchen, he would not deign to turn his back on the enemy. He gave the tray to Blinkey and obeyed a gesture of Alexander's which sent him to take a new order from the Italians.
"I don't believe he'll come to wait on us," whispered Mrs. Milton to Tony Kidd. "If he doesn't, it will have been hardly worth the fag of coming all this way downtown. His handing us our things would have been the best fun of all."
"I think you'll get your fun," mumbled Tony. But he was not enjoying himself.