Read it through once

A few days later he tried to persuade her to take a ticket in a shilling sweepstakes which he was getting up among the out and the indoor servants. She pleaded poverty--her wages would not be due till the end of August. But William offered to lend her the money, and he pressed the hat containing the bits of paper on which were written the horses' names so insinuatingly upon her that a sudden impulse to oblige him came over her, and before she had time to think she had put her hand in the hat and taken a number.