'Not good enough,' says I. 'If that's
your pride, mother, you may put it in your pipe and smoke it, and as you
'aven't got a pipe, perhaps behind the oven will do as well,'--that's what
I said to her. I saw well enough there was nothing for me but service, and
I means to stop here until I can get on three or four good things and then
retire into a nice comfortable public-house and do my own betting."
"You would give up betting then?"
"I'd give up backing 'orses, if you mean that.... What I should like would
be to get on to a dozen good things at long prices--half-a-dozen like
Silver Braid would do it. For a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds I could
have the 'Red Lion,' and just inside my own bar I could do a hundred-pound
book on all the big races."
Esther listened, hearing interminable references to jockeys, publicans,
weights, odds, and the certainty, if he had the "Red Lion," of being able
to get all Joe Walker's betting business away from him. Allusions to the
police, and the care that must be taken not to bet with anyone who had not
been properly introduced, frightened her; but her fears died in the
sensation of his arm about her waist, and the music that the striking of a
match had put to flight had begun again in the next plantation, and it
began again in their hearts.
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