"Yes," groaned Jeremiah.
"I thought so. Now if you had backed Tricksy, what would you have won?"
"Nearly five thousand," groaned Jeremiah.
"By all that's wonderful! And you didn't follow it out! But I'm a nice one, I am, to preach!" And then Captain Ablewhite said, playfully, "Don't you let me catch you at it again!"
"I won't," groaned Jeremiah.
"The beauty of the thing is, as I have said," continued Captain Ablewhite, "that the game's alive. It's always alive, and waiting for us. What is one miss? You can snap your fingers at it. All you've got to do is to increase your stake the next time. Old fellow, I give you my solemn word there's only one thing in life worth living for, and that is horse-racing and betting on it. If it was abolished, there are a thousand men in England who would put a bullet through their heads to-morrow; and I'd be one of them—I would! It isn't called a Royal sport for nothing. There never was anything like it, and there never will be anything like it. Great Scot! the fortunes I've seen lost and won! Come and have some fizz."
Jeremiah went and had some fizz, and then Captain Ablewhite asked him what his trouble was.
"I've lost all the ready money I brought with me," said Jeremiah.
"What of that? You want to go on betting?"
"Yes."