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He smiled as he fingered the crisp, clean notes, and gazed lovingly upon the dingy-looking but potent check drawn on the old army bankers. "No nonsense about that signature," he cheerfully said. "Anstruther is no welsher," and, as he rang for his hot water and a morning refresher, he picked up the little note with an eager curiosity. "By Gad! she is a cool one! This is no vulgar darned occasion!
Men could make nothing of it save the fact that there was "something dark" somewhere. The "painted quid" had done its work more thoroughly than Willon and the welsher had intended; they had meant that the opiate should be just sufficient to make the favorite off his speed, but not to make effects so palpable as these.
The man fell unhurt, unbruised, so gently was he dropped on his back among the muddy, chilly water, and the overhanging brambles; and, as he rose from the ducking, a shudder of ferocious and filthy oaths poured from his lips, increased tenfold by the uproarious laughter of the crowd, who knew him as "a welsher," and thought him only too well served.
"And you're the man who called me a welsher!" There were signs of a flicker of spirit in the knight's prominent eyes, but they died away. He made no reply. "Great Scott!" moaned his lordship, in a fervor of self-pity. "Here have I been all these years letting you give me Hades in every shape and form, when all the while My goodness, if I'd only known earlier!" He turned to Jimmy.
"Well, it's all your fault -this whole confounded row!" "Oh, you're going to play welsher, are you?" sneered Bert. "Humph! By morning you'll be a full-fledged mucker!" "Don't you worry about that," argued Bayliss, though rather stiffly. "I know my family -and my caste." "I should hope so," rejoined Dodge, with just a shade more cordiality.
And while he bent over her, flirting in the fashion that made him the darling of the drawing-rooms, and looking down into her superb Velasquez eyes, he did not know, and if he had known would have been careless of it, that afar off, while with rage, and with his gaze straining on to the course through his race-glass, Ben Davis, "the welsher," who had watched the finish watched the "Guards' Crack" landed at the distance muttered, with a mastiff's savage growl: "He wins, does he?
"My 'honest gentleman," he said wearily, "leave this. I tell you; do you hear?" "Make me!" retorted the "welsher," defiant in his stout-built square strength, and ready to brazen the matter out. "Make me, my cock o' fine feathers! Put me out of the ring if you can, Mr. Dainty Limbs! I've as much business here as you."
"What do you think of our chauffeur now?" cried Cynthia radiantly, for the winning of those few sovereigns was a real joy to her, and the shadow of the welsher had no terrors, since she did not know what Medenham meant. "He improves on acquaintance," admitted Mrs. Devar, thawing a little under the influence of a successful tip. He soon returned, and handed them six sovereigns apiece.
No welsher can hope for admission to one of the enclosed courses after he is once fairly caught, and my victim whimpered, "Come in yere and 'ave a drink." Then he said, "Look yere, I ain't got a bloomin' 'alf dollar but what I 'ad off o' you. I walked down this mornin', and hadn't only the gate-money, and your pal laid me on to you. Say nothin' this time. I ain't had no grub to-day.
After five minutes or so, during which no welsher on a race-course was ever more hardly used, two policemen interfered to rescue the man of two wives, and there was a procession all the way to the police-court, where, after several charges of assault had been preferred and proved against half a dozen mariners, Joseph was himself charged with bigamy, both wives giving evidence, and committed for trial.
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