Elizabeth may not have charm but she certainly has simplicity. "You don't mean to say," I cried, a light breaking on me, "that you got your next month's wages in advance just to put it all on a horse?"
"That I did," she replied complacently. "You see, my young man ses that, if you put it on some time before'and, you get a better price, so I thort I'd give it to 'im to put on at once. 'E promised 'e wouldn't waste a minnit over it."
"But this is most foolish of you—to trust your money to an entire stranger," I expostulated.
"'E isn't a stranger—'e's my young man," corrected Elizabeth, tossing her head.
For the following few days she was radiant—but then anybody would be who was certain of the winner of the Derby a week before the race. In addition to this she had got a young man. Those brief periods when Elizabeth's young men are in the incipient stages of paying her attention are agreeable to everybody. Elizabeth, feeling no doubt in her rough untutored way that God's in His heaven and all's right with the world, sings at her work; she shows extraordinary activity when going about her duties. She does unusual things like remembering to polish the brasses every week—indeed you have only to step into the hall and glance at the stair-rods to discover the exact stage of her latest "affair." I remember that, when one ardent swain "in the flying corpse" went to the length of offering her marriage before he flew away, she cleaned the entire house down in her enthusiasm, and had actually got to the cellars before he vanished out of her life.
The follower from the racing stable might aptly be described as "The Man Who Never Came Back." He romped out of Elizabeth's existence on the Sunday preceding the Derby.
"I waited for 'im four-an'-an-'arf 'ours, an' 'e didn't turn up," she informed me next day.
"Perhaps he was prevented from keeping the appointment," I suggested to comfort her, though I felt the outlook was gloomy.
She shook her head. "I'll never see 'im no more. I know 'em," she said, drawing on the depth of her experience of young men who do the vanishing trick. "An' my money gone too. It's 'eartbreakin'. But I might 'ave known that that there 'orse was a bad sign."
"What horse?" I asked, bewildered.