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A rank outsider, a twenty to one shot, won the race, and after the confederate had signified that he was ready, the chief sent the report through as if it had come from the track. The whole transaction didn't take over two minutes and the "bookies" were hit for about $30,000, which Mr. Chief and his side pardner divided between them.
He had been "class," and they had stuck to him. Then when he began to go back No; worse. Not that. They said he had gone crooked. That was it. Crooked as Doyers Street, they said; throwing every race; standing in with his owner to trim the bookies, and they couldn't stand for that. Sport was sport. But they had been loyal. They had warned, implored, begged.
Returning with a blanched face to the seething crowd, and presently to the Grand Stand, Vivie's mood altered from awe to anger. The "bookies" were beside themselves with fury.
"Bramble, a fifty to one chance, not a man in a hundred backed her; King of Trumps, there was some place money lost on him; Young Hopeful, a rank outsider. What a day for the bookies!" "You mustn't think of them things no more," said Esther. "If I'd only have thought of Bramble... I could have had a hundred to one against Matchbox and Bramble coupled."
Then look at the lady auctioneer selling brass sovereigns a penny apiece. "Buy one, gentlemen, and see what they're like, so as the 'bookies' can't pawse 'em on ye unawares!" "Food enough!" Yes, at Margett's, Patton's, Hatton's, and "The Three Brooms," as well as the barrows for stewed eels, hard-boiled eggs, trotters, coker-nuts, winkles, oysters, cockles, and all the luxuries of the New Cut.
But prompt ventilation of this allimportant question... Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of the canteen, over the motley slush. Fair Rebel! Fair Rebel! Even money the favourite: ten to one the field.
To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip.
"Well ridden, Albert," she said, and in the silence her words were heard by thousands. The lad touched his forehead, and took her hand sheepishly. "Thank you, Miss," he answered. Then the storm broke, and the bookies who had made millions over the defeat of the favourite led the roar. There was no mistaking the matter now. The Boys had been sold again.
But, honestly, she could not make up her mind about the stranger. Although he was so exceptionally good-looking, perhaps, he was not exactly distinguished looking. But she had known dukes and Cabinet Ministers who resembled farmers and butlers, young men of high rank who had the appearance of grooms or bookies. It was difficult to be sure about anyone without personal knowledge of him.
When women of a similar educated lower middle class come into full equality with men in opportunity, they should marry the Bertie Adamses of their acquaintance and not the stockbrokers, butchers, drapers, bookies, professional cricketers or pugilists. They would then become the mothers of the salvation-generation of the British people which will found and rule Utopia.
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