miserable, and it is so lonely sitting in this house, that I could stand
it no longer.... Talking to you saved me from thinking, and I did not want
to think until this race was over. If Silver Braid is beaten we are
ruined. Indeed, I don't know what will become of us. For fifteen years I
have borne up; I have lived on little at the best of times, and very often
have gone without; but that is nothing compared to the anxiety--to see him
come in with a white face, to see him drop into a chair and hear him say,
'Beaten a head on the post,' or 'Broke down, otherwise he would have won
in a canter.' I have always tried to be a good wife and tried to console
him, and to do the best when he said, 'I have lost half a year's wages, I
don't know how we shall pull through.' I have borne with ten thousand
times more than I can tell you. The sufferings of a gambler's wife cannot
be told. Tell me, what do you think my feelings must have been when one
night I heard him calling me out of my sleep, when I heard him say, 'I
can't die, Annie, without bidding you good-bye. I can only hope that you
will be able to pull through, and I know that the Gaffer will do all he
can for you, but he has been hit awful hard too. You mustn't think too
badly of me, Annie, but I have had such a bad time that I couldn't put up
with it any longer, and I thought the best thing I could do would be to
go.' That's just how he talked--nice words to hear your husband speak in
your ear through the darkness! There was no time to send for the doctor,
so I jumped out of bed, put the kettle on, and made him drink glass after
glass of salt and water. At last he brought up the laudanum."

Esther listened to the melancholy woman, and remembered the little man
whom she saw every day so orderly, so precise, so sedate, so methodical,
so unemotional, into whose life she thought no faintest emotion had ever
entered--and this was the truth.

"So long as I only had myself to think of I didn't mind; but now there are