“Certainly, sir, certainly,” said he most urbanely, handing it across.
I glanced down its columns until my eye rested upon the list of the latest betting.
“Hullo!” I said, “they are laying odds upon the favorite for the Cambridgeshire. But perhaps,” I added, looking up, “you are not interested in these matters?”
“Snares, sir!” said he violently; “wiles of the enemy! Mortals are but given a few years to live; how can they squander them so? They have not even an eye to their poor worldly interests,” he added in a quieter tone, “or they would never back a single horse at such short odds with a field of thirty.”
There was something in this speech of his which tickled me immensely. I suppose it was the odd way in which he blended religious intolerance with worldly wisdom. I laid the “Times” aside with the conviction that I should be able to spend the next two hours to better purpose than in its perusal.
“You speak as if you understood the matter, at any rate,” I remarked.
“Yes, sir,” he answered; “few men in England understood these things better in the old days before I changed my profession. But that is all over now.”
“Changed your profession?” said I, interrogatively.
“Yes; I changed my name, too.”
“Indeed?” said I.