"It is more serious than I thought," she shouted. "I want to tell you about it." "What about it?" he said, opening his eyes. "She has pledged the plate for thirty pounds to back that 'orse." "What 'orse?" "Ben Jonson." "He broke down at the bushes. If he hadn't I should have been broke up. The whole neighbourhood was on him. So she pledged the plate to back him. She didn't do that to back him herself. Some one must have put her up to it." "Yes, it was Bill Evans." "Ah, that blackguard put her up to it. I thought she'd left him for good. She promised us that she'd never speak to him again." "You see, she was that fond of him that she couldn't help herself. There's many that can't." "How much did they get on the plate?" "Thirty pounds." William blew a long whistle. Then, starting up in the bed, he said, "She can't stop here. If it comes out that it was through betting, it won't do this house any good. We're already suspected. There's that old sweetheart of yours, the Salvation cove, on the lookout for evidence of betting being carried on." "She'll go away in the morning. But I thought that you might lend her the money to get the plate out." "What! thirty pounds?" "It's a deal of money, I know; but I thought that you might be able to manage it. You've been lucky over this race." "Yes, but think of all I've lost this summer. This is the first bit of luck I've had for a long while." "I thought you might be able to manage it." Esther stood by the bedside, her knee leaned against the edge. She seemed to him at that moment as the best woman in the world, and he said-- "Thirty pounds is no more to me than two-pence-halfpenny if you wish it, Esther." "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." "You mean that you think that one of these days we shall have the police down upon us?" "Don't you sometimes think that we can't always go on without being caught? Every day I hear of the police being down on some betting club or other."