I wasn't only small in body in the old
days, I was small in mind, Shiel."
"Anyhow, I've done with betting and racing, Mona. I've just got time
left--I'm only thirty-nine--to start and really do something with
myself."
"Well, start now, dear man of Lammis. What is it you have to do before
twelve o'clock to-night?" "What is it? Why, I have to pay over two
thousand of this,"--he flourished the banknotes--"and even then I'll
still have two thousand left. But wait--wait. There was the original
fifty pounds. Where is that fifty pounds, little girl alive? Out with
it. This is the profit. Where is the fifty you staked?" His voice was
gay with raillery.
She could look him in the face now and prevaricate without any shame or
compunction at all. "That fifty pounds--that! Why, I used it to buy my
ticket for Canada. My husband ought to pay my expenses out to him."
He laughed greatly. All Ireland was rioting in his veins now. He had no
logic or reasoning left. "Well, that's the way to get into your old
man's heart, Mona. To think of that! I call it tact divine. Everything
has spun my way at last. I was right about that Derby, after all. It
was in my bones that I'd make a pot out of it, but I thought I had lost
it all when Flamingo went down.
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