"I detest the whole concern," said Conway. "So long as gentlemen bred and trained to run their horses in honorable rivalry, it was a noble sport, and well became the first squirearchy of the world; but when it degenerated into a field for every crafty knave and trickster,--when the low cunning of the gambler succeeded to the bold daring of the true lover of racing,--then the turf became no better than the _rouge et noir_ table, without even the poor consolation of thinking that chance was any element in the result."
"Why, what would you have? It's a game where the best player wins, that's all," broke in Beecher.
"If you mean it is always a contest where the best horse carries away the prize, I enter my denial to the assertion. If it were so, the legs would have no existence, and all that classic vocabulary of 'nobbling,' 'squaring,' and so on, have no dictionary."
"It's all the same the whole world over," broke in Beecher. "The wide-awake ones will have the best seat on the coach."
Conway made no reply; but the increased energy with which he puffed his cigar bespoke the impatience he was suffering under.
"What became of the daughter?" asked Beecher, abruptly; and then, not awaiting the answer, went on: "A deuced good-looking girl, if properly togged out, but she had n't the slightest notion of dressing herself."
"Their narrow fortune may have had something to say to that," said Conway, gravely.
"Where there's a will, there's a way,--that 's my idea. I was never so hard up in life but I could make my tailor torn me out like a gentleman. I take it," added he, returning to the former theme, "she was a proud one. Old Kellett was awfully afraid of doing many a thing from the dread of her knowing it. He told me so himself."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Conway, with evident pleasure in the tone.
"I could have helped him fifty ways. I knew fellows who would have 'done' his bills,--small sums, of course,--and have shoved him along pleasantly enough, but _she_ would n't have it at any price."
"I was not aware of that," remarked Conway, inviting, by his manner, further revelations.
Beecher, however, mistaking the source of the interest he had thus excited, and believing that his own craft and shrewdness were the qualities that awakened respect, went on to show how conversant he was with all financial operations amongst Jews and money-lenders, proudly declaring that there was not a "man on town" knew the cent per centers as he did.