“Can that fight talk even if this is a pleasure party.  My, how time does fly!  We are nearly home now.  Let’s all go down the street and see what’s doing.  Must you leave us?  Don’t rush away in the heat of the forenoon.  So long.  My, I am glad that man’s out of the machine!”

Sabrina, in spite of the anti-betting law, goes to the race track and returns with money.  She also drops a few remarks concerning gentlemen who claim their scarf-pins have been purloined by ladies.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Them Senators that put the kibosh on that racetrack bill can consider themselves as personal friends of every chorus Fluff that ever scanned a dope sheet,” remarked Sabrina, the Show Girl, as she alighted from a new big automobile.  “Pipe the ferry-boat.  It’s all mine; name on every piece.  And I am personally thankful to those gents that I am the proud possessor of the same.

“Did I catch?  Well, I should hope so, dear.  I landed this buzz wagon out of a ten dollar pike bet.  Can you surpass it?  Talk about playing in luck.  Wait until I touch wood.  Wilbur says betting on the races beats trifling with the affections of an expense account all to pieces.

“You know that, though I lead a simple and uneventful existence, the inheritance that was left me was pretty near all in, and it was either up to me to get married, get a job on one of the roofs or catch a live one, and I thought the best of all the evils was to catch the aforementioned live one.  I am not one of these Janes that goes dotty over the pit-i-pats, and though I always sit up until The Morning Telegraph comes out on the street, the racing news is not the first thing I turn to.

“Wilbur’s show closes in a couple of weeks and he is going to the island for the summer.  Can that old stuff.  I mean Coney, not Blackwell’s.  I been piking around for a hunch for some time, and just the other evening I was out with a party who is interested in the bet placing business at all of the big tracks, and he said he was hep to a few killings, and any time I would come out he would give them to me and I could play the other books.

“Knowing that he had influence, I naturally took an interest in him, but, say, this is a long, sad story and—.  Ah, certainly!  I knew you could not suppress your Southern hospitality much longer—­that is, I hoped you couldn’t.  Yes, waiter; bring me a long one.

“Well, I took a peep at my check-book about a week ago and decided that it was me for the track.  I meets this wop and he certainly lands me in right.  He gives me a twenty case note and the card.  I got the twenty changed and plants ten of it in the Lisle Thread Bank, making up my mind that no matter what happened the day would not be ill-spent.

“I plays his tip at 8 to 1 on the first race and ketches.  Out of that ninety I plant forty.  Still following the kind gentleman’s advice I pikes the fifty on a dog in the second race and he never does come in.