"I haven't been an extravagant wife, have I?" she said, getting into bed and taking him in her arms. "I never asked you for money before. She's my friend—she's yours too—we've known her all our lives. We can't see her go to prison, can we, Bill, without raising a finger to save her?"
She had never called him Bill before, and the familiar abbreviation touched him, and he said—
"I owe everything to you, Esther; everything that's mine is yours. But," he said, drawing away so that he might see her better, "what do you say if I ask something of you?"
"What are you going to ask me?"
"I want you to say that you won't bother me no more about the betting. You was brought up to think it wicked. I know all that, but you see we can't do without it."
"Do you think not?"
"Don't the thirty pounds you're asking for Sarah come out of betting?"
"I suppose it do."
"Most certainly it do."
"I can't help feeling, Bill, that we shan't always be so lucky as we have been."