Old Man Curry met this added impertinence without resentment, for the light was beginning to dawn on him. He drew out his packet of fine cut and studied its wrappings carefully.
"I'm not kidding, old-timer. Did you ever think of it?"
"Once," was the reply. "Once, son, and I've been thinking about it ever since. She was the right one for me, but she got the notion I wasn't the right one for her. Sometimes it happens that way. She found the man she thought she wanted, and I took to runnin' round the country with race horses. After that she was sure I was a lost soul and hell-bent for certain. This was a long time ago—before you was born, I reckon."
After a silence, the Kid asked another question:
"Well, at that, the race-track game is no game for a married man, is it?"
"M-m-well," answered the patriarch thoughtfully, "that's as how a man's wife looks at it. Some of 'em think it ain't no harm to gamble s'long's you can win, but the average woman, Frank, she don't want the hosses runnin' for her bread and butter. You can't blame her for that, because a woman is dependent by nature. If the Lord had figured her to git out an' hustle with the men, He'd have built her different, but He made her to be p'tected and shelteredlike. A single man can hustle and bat round an' go hungry if he wants to, but he ain't got no right to ask a woman to gamble her vittles on any proposition whatever."
"Ain't it the truth!" ejaculated the Bald-faced Kid, with a depth of feeling quite foreign to his nature. "You surely spoke a mouthful then!" Old Man Curry raised one eyebrow slightly and continued his discourse.
"For a man even to figger on gettin' married, he ought to have something comin' in steady—something that bad hosses an' worse men can't take away from him. He oughtn't to bet at all, but if he does it ought to be on a mortal cinch. There ain't many real cinches on a race track, Frank; not the kind that a married man'd be justified in bettin' the rent money on. Yes, sir, a man thinkin' 'bout gettin' married ought to have a job—and stick to it!"
"And that job oughtn't to be on a race track either," supplemented the Kid, his eyes fixed on the cigarette which he was rolling. "But that ain't all I wanted to ask you about, old-timer. Suppose, now, a fellow had a girl that was too good for him—a girl that wouldn't wipe her feet on a gambler if she knew it, and was brought up to think that betting was wrong. And suppose now that this fellow wasn't even a gambler. Suppose he was a hustler—a tout—but he'd asked the girl to marry him without telling her what he was, and she'd said she would. What ought that fellow to do?"
Old Man Curry took his time about answering; took also a large portion of fine cut and stowed it away in his cheek.