"But if there had been no accident and you 'ad looked down the list of 'orses, 'ow do yer know that yer would 'ave spotted the winner?"
"What, not Wheatear, and with all that American corn in my 'ead? Is it likely I'd've missed it?"
No one answered, and Ketley drank his whisky in the midst of a most thoughtful silence. At last one of the group said, and he seemed to express the general mind of the company--
"I don't know if omens be worth a-following of, but I'm blowed if 'orses be worth backing if the omens is again them."
His neighbour answered, "And they do come wonderful true occasional. They 'as 'appened to me, and I daresay to all 'ere present." The company nodded. "You've noticed how them that knows nothing at all about 'orses--the less they knows the better their luck--will look down the lot and spot the winner from pure fancy--the name that catches their eyes as likely."
"There's something in it," said a corpulent butcher with huge, pursy, prominent eyes and a portentous stomach. "I always held with going to church, and I hold still more with going to church since I backed Vanity for the Chester Cup. I was a-falling asleep over the sermon, when suddenly I wakes up hearing, 'Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.'"
Several similar stories were told, and then various systems for backing horses were discussed. "You don't believe that no 'orses is pulled?" said Mr. Stack, the porter at Sutherland Mansions, Oxford Street, a large, bluff man, wearing a dark blue square-cut frock coat with brass buttons. A curious-looking man, with red-stained skin, dark beady eyes, a scanty growth of beard, and a loud, assuming voice. "You don't believe that no 'orses is pulled?" he reiterated.
"I didn't say that no 'orse was never pulled," said Journeyman. He stood with his back leaning against the partition, his long legs stretched out. "If one was really in the know, then I don't say nothing about it; but who of us is ever really in the know?"
"I'm not so sure about that," said Mr. Stack. "There's a young man in my mansions that 'as a servant; this servant's cousin, a girl in the country, keeps company with one of the lads in the White House stable. If that ain't good enough, I don't know what is; good enough for my half-crown and another pint of beer too, Mrs. Latch, as you'll be that kind."