"Oh, I guess I wouldn't tell him the story," Bill advised, hastily.
"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."
"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."
"What's Pa been up to now?" pertly demanded the voice of Pa's fair daughter.
Isidora had come in while the two were so deeply occupied in conversation and the dregs in their coffee cups, that they had not seen her lift the curtain.
Since the day of her first introduction to P. Gordon, she had not appeared at this early hour of the morning. Her father was generally at his post, and when he was there, Isidora was supposed to exist not for use, but for ornament. However, she knew that Alexander was now reposing after last night's eloquence, and she had taken advantage of his absence. This time she was not in wrapper and curling pins. She had dressed herself with great care for the day, having learned from the "hired girl" that Bill Willing's "swell friend" had come in with him.
"What's Pa been up to now, I say?" she asked again, before the startled and mortified Bill could answer.
"Oh, nothing," replied the artist, apologetically. "We was just talkin'."
"I was wondering if he would advance me anything, enough to get back to England with--on my letter of credit?" Loveland frankly explained.
Isidora's eyes dilated at Val's suggestion of going back to England. It had not occurred to her, facts being as stated in the newspapers, that he would wish to return to his own country; and as fortunately, after the first sensational paragraphs, his affairs had been crowded out of public interest by various startling events of far greater importance, she had thought that he would be thankful to "worry along" as he was.