“If I could only feel it was a cosmic certainty—­” says Cora.

“Oh, she’s cosmic, all right!” says Buck.  “I never seen anything cosmicker.  Look what she’s done already, and Sandy only begun!  Just watch him!  He’ll cosmic this here game to a standstill.  He’ll have Sour Dough there touching him for two-bits breakfast money—­see if he don’t.”

“But eleven came only twice,” says the conservative Cora.

“Sure!  But did you notice Nos. 22 and 33?” says Buck.  “You got to humour any good hunch to a certain extent, cosmic or no cosmic.”

“I see,” says Cora with gleaming eyes; “and No. 33 is not only what drew our beautiful building lot but it is also the precise number of my years on the earth plane.”

Cousin Egbert overheard this and snorted like no gentleman had ought to, even in the lowest gambling den.

“Thirty-three!” says he to me.  “Did you hear the big cheat?  Say!  No gambling house on earth would have the nerve to put her right age on a wheel!  The chances is ruinous enough now without running ’em up to forty-eight or so.  I bet that’s about what you’d find if you was to tooth her.”

Sandy has now gone back, followed by the crowd, and wins another bet on No. 11.  This is too much for Cora’s Standard Oil instincts.  She never trusts Leonard with any money, but she goes over into a corner, hikes the flag of her country up over one red stocking for a minute, and comes back with a two-dollar bill, which she splits on 22 and 33; and when 33 wins she’s mad clean through because 22 didn’t also win, and she’s wasted a whole dollar, like throwing it into the Atlantic Ocean.

“Too bad, Pettie!” says Leonard, who was crowded in by her.  “But you mustn’t expect to have all the luck”—­which is about the height of Leonard’s mental reach.

“It was not luck; it was simple lack of faith,” says Cora.  “I put myself in tune with the Infinite and make my claim upon the all-good—­and then I waver.  The loss of that dollar was a punishment to me.”

Now she stakes a dollar on No. 33 alone, and when it comes double-o she cries out that the man had leaned his hand on the edge of the table while the ball was rolling and thereby mushed up her cosmic vibrations, even if he didn’t do something a good deal more crooked.  Then she switches to No. 22, and that wins.

She now gets suspicious of the chips and has ’em turned into real money, which she stuffs into her consort’s pockets for the time being, all but two dollars that go on Nos. 11 and 33.  And No. 22 comes up again.  She nearly fainted and didn’t recover in time to get anything down for the next roll—­and I’m darned if 11 don’t show!  She turns savagely on her husband at this.  The poor hulk only says: 

“But, Pettie, you’re playing the game—­I ain’t.”

She replies bitterly: 

“Oh, ain’t that just like a man!  I knew you were going to say that!”—­and seemed to think she had him well licked.