"Well, sir, when the prices were marked up for that race in which I had the good thing, blamed if Jodan wasn't chalked up at 100 to 1. My good thing horse was the second choice at 5 to 1. I stood there looking at the prices, getting pulled around and butted into, and I had the dingedest time making up my mind what I was going to do that you ever heard of in your life.
"'If my wife's hunch is right,' I thought, 'and that Jodan horse wins at 100 to 1 without my playing him, I'll never hear the last of it as long's I'm on top of the ground. She'll be telling me morning, noon and night, that she gave me a chance to win $5000, and that I didn't have enough gumption to take it. And if the good thing my shoe-clerk friend gave me wins at 5 to 1, I'll be sore on myself for throwing away a chance to pick up $250 if I don't play it.'
"I walked out onto the lawn so's I could have more room to make up my mind. Then I wheeled around suddenly and dived into the betting ring.
"'By cracky!' says I to myself, 'I'm doing this little gamble myself, and, feminine hunch or no hunch, I'm going to play that good thing my shoe-clerk friend gave me, and nothing else.'
"So I went to the first bookmaker I saw and got a $250 to $50 ticket on my good thing."
Here the man with the granulated lids sighed heavily and looked genuinely distressed.
"Say, it's the dickens, ain't it," he said, after a pause, "how these things happen?"
The two men in the seat to whom he had been addressing his conversation exhibited a certain suppressed interest as to the outcome.
"Of course Jodan just walked in that day, at 100 to 1?" said one of them finally, with a grin that clearly indicated his belief that he had the result discounted.
The man with a ravelled cigar struck a match and lit the same for the eighteenth time.