"What she don't know won't hurt her."
"Son, what a woman don't know she guesses and feels, and she may have the same sort of a feelin' that I've got—that some kinds of money never bring anybody luck. A while ago you said this game was rotten, and yet you're tryin' to cash in your stack and pick up all the sleepers before you quit. Seems to me I'd want to start clean."
"Dough is dough, I tell you!" repeated the Kid stubbornly. He turned and shook his fist at the distant betting ring where the cashiers were paying off the last of the winning tickets. "Look out for me, all of you sharks!" said the boy. "From now till the end of the meeting it's packing-house rules, and everything goes!"
"'A wise son heareth his father's instruction,'" quoted Old Man Curry.
"I hear you, old-timer," said the Kid, "but I don't get you. Next thing I suppose you'll pull Solomon on me and tell me what he says about tainted money!"
"I can do that too. Let's see, how does it go? Oh, yes. 'There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing; there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.' That's Solomon on the money question, my boy."
"Huh!" scoffed the unregenerate one. "Solomon was a king, wasn't he, with dough to burn? It's mighty easy to talk—when you've got yours. I haven't got mine yet, but you watch my smoke while I go after it!"
Old Man Curry trudged across the infield in the wake of the good horse Elisha. Another owner, on the day of an important race, might have been nervous or worried; the patriarch maintained his customary calm; his head was bent at a reflective angle, and he nibbled at a straw. Certain gentlemen, speculatively inclined, would have given much more than a penny for the old man's thoughts; having bought them at any price, they would have felt themselves defrauded.
Elisha, the star performer of the Curry stable, had been combed and groomed and polished within an inch of his life, and there were blue ribbons in his mane, a sure sign of the confidence of Shanghai, the hostler. He was also putting this confidence into words and telling the horse what was expected of him.
"See all them folks, 'Lisha? They come out yere to see you win anotheh stake an' trim that white hoss from Seattle. Grey Ghost, thass whut they calls him. When you hooks up with him down in front of that gran' stan', he'll think he's a ghost whut's mislaid his graveyard, yes, indeedy! They tells me he got lots of that ol' early speed; they tells me he kin go down to the half-mile pole in nothin', flat. Let him do it; 'tain't early speed whut wins a mile race; it's late speed. Ain't no money hung up on that ol' half-mile pole! Let that white fool run his head off; he'll come back to you. Lawdy, all them front runners comes back to the reg'lar hosses. Run the same like you allus do, an' eat 'em up in the stretch, 'Lisha! Grey Ghost—pooh! I neveh seen his name on no lamp-post! I bet befo' you git th'ough with him he'll wish he'd saved some that ol' early speed to finish on. You ask me, 'Lisha, I'd say we's spendin' this yere first money right now!"