"But you says yourself that yer can't always read them," said Journeyman; "an accident will send you off on the wrong tack, so it all comes to the same thing, omens or no omens."
"A man will trip over a piece of wire laid across the street, but that don't prove he can't walk, do it, Walter?"
Walter was unable to say that it did not, and so Ketley scored another point over his opponent. "I made a mistake, I know I did, and if it will help you to understand I'll tell you how it was made. Three weeks ago I was in this 'ere bar 'aving what I usually takes. It was a bit early; none of you fellows had come in. I don't think it was much after eight. The governor was away in the north racin'—hadn't been 'ome for three or four days; the missus was beginning to look a bit lonely." Ketley smiled and glanced at Esther, who had told Charles to serve some customers, and was listening as intently as the rest. "I'd 'ad a nice bit of supper, and was just feeling that fresh and clear 'eaded as I was explaining to you just now is required for the reading, thinking of nothing in perticler, when suddenly the light came. I remembered a conversation I 'ad with a chap about American corn. He wouldn't 'ear of the Government taxing corn to 'elp the British farmer. Well, that conversation came back to me as clear as if the dawn had begun to break. I could positively see the bloody corn; I could pretty well 'ave counted it. I felt there was an omen about somewhere, and all of a tremble I took up the paper; it was lying on the bar just where your hand is, Walter. But at that moment, just as I was about to cast my eye down the list of 'orses, a cab comes down the street as 'ard as it could tear. There was but two or three of us in the bar, and we rushed out—the shafts was broke, 'orse galloping and kicking, and the cabby 'olding on as 'ard as he could. But it was no good, it was bound to go, and over it went against the kerb. The cabby, poor chap, was pretty well shook to pieces; his leg was broke, and we'd to 'elp to take him to the hosspital. Now I asks if it was no more than might be expected that I should have gone wrong about the omen. Next day, as luck would have it, I rolled up 'alf a pound of butter in a piece of paper on which 'Cross Roads' was written."
"But if there had been no accident and you 'ad looked down the list of 'orses, 'ow do yer know that yer would 'ave spotted the winner?"
"What, not Wheatear, and with all that American corn in my 'ead? Is it likely I'd've missed it?"
No one answered, and Ketley drank his whisky in the midst of a most thoughtful silence. At last one of the group said, and he seemed to express the general mind of the company—
"I don't know if omens be worth a-following of, but I'm blowed if 'orses be worth backing if the omens is again them."
His neighbour answered, "And they do come wonderful true occasional. They 'as 'appened to me, and I daresay to all 'ere present." The company nodded. "You've noticed how them that knows nothing at all about 'orses—the less they knows the better their luck—will look down the lot and spot the winner from pure fancy—the name that catches their eyes as likely."
"There's something in it," said a corpulent butcher with huge, pursy, prominent eyes and a portentous stomach. "I always held with going to church, and I hold still more with going to church since I backed Vanity for the Chester Cup. I was a-falling asleep over the sermon, when suddenly I wakes up hearing, 'Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.'"
Several similar stories were told, and then various systems for backing horses were discussed. "You don't believe that no 'orses is pulled?" said Mr. Stack, the porter at Sutherland Mansions, Oxford Street, a large, bluff man, wearing a dark blue square-cut frock coat with brass buttons. A curious-looking man, with red-stained skin, dark beady eyes, a scanty growth of beard, and a loud, assuming voice. "You don't believe that no 'orses is pulled?" he reiterated.