But you mustn't see that brute again. If he ever comes into that 'ere
bar, I'll give him a piece of my mind. I'd give him more than a piece of
my mind if I was the man I was a twelvemonth ago." William coughed, and
Esther looked at him anxiously.
XXXV
Lacking a parlour on the ground floor for the use of special customers,
William had arranged a room upstairs where they could smoke and drink.
There were tables in front of the windows and chairs against the walls,
and in the middle of the room a bagatelle board.
When William left off going to race-courses he had intended to refrain
from taking money across the bar and to do all his betting business in
this room.
He thought that it would be safer. But as his customers multiplied he
found that he could not ask them all upstairs; it attracted more attention
than to take the money quietly across the bar. Nevertheless the room
upstairs had proved a success. A man spent more money if he had a room
where he could sit quietly among his friends than he would seated on a
high stool in a public bar, jostled and pushed about; so it had come to be
considered a sort of club room; and a large part of the neighbourhood came
there to read the papers, to hear and discuss the news. And specially
useful it had proved to Journeyman and Stack.
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