"I've never said nothing about it. I don't believe in a wife interfering with her husband; and business was that bad, and your 'ealth 'asn't been the same since them colds you caught standing about in them betting rings, so I don't see how you could help it. But now that business is beginning to come back to us, it might be as well to give up the betting." "It is the betting that brings the business; we shouldn't take five pounds a week was it not for the betting. What's the difference between betting on the course and betting in the bar? No one says nothing against it on the course; the police is there, and they goes after the welshers and persecutes them. Then the betting that's done at Tattersall's and the Albert Club, what is the difference? The Stock Exchange, too, where thousands and thousands is betted every day. It is the old story--one law for the rich and another for the poor. Why shouldn't the poor man 'ave his 'alf-crown's worth of excitement? The rich man can have his thousand pounds' worth whenever he pleases. The same with the public 'ouses--there's a lot of hypocritical folk that is for docking the poor man of his beer, but there's no one that's for interfering with them that drink champagne in the clubs. It's all bloody rot, and it makes me sick when I think of it. Them hypocritical folk. Betting! Isn't everything betting? How can they put down betting? Hasn't it been going on since the world began? Rot, says I! They can just ruin a poor devil like me, and that's about all. We are ruined, and the rich goes scot-free. Hypocritical, mealy-mouthed lot. 'Let's say our prayers and sand the sugar'; that's about it. I hate them that is always prating out religion. When I hears too much religion going about I says now's the time to look into their accounts." William leaned out of bed to light his pipe from the candle on the night-table. "There's good people in the world, people that never thinks but of doing good, and do not live for pleasure." "'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' Esther. Their only pleasure is a bet. When they've one on they've something to look forward to; whether they win or lose they 'as their money's worth. You know what I say is true; you've seen them, how they look forward to the evening paper to see how the 'oss is going on in betting. Man can't live without hope. It is their only hope, and I says no one has a right to take it from them." "What about their poor wives? Very little good their betting is to them. It's all very well to talk like that, William, but you know, and you can't say you don't, that a great deal of mischief comes of betting; you know that once they think of it and nothing else, they neglect their work. There's Stack, he's lost his place as porter; there's Journeyman, too, he's out of work." "And a good thing for them; they've done a great deal better since they chucked it."