Esther Waters • Paragraph 2091
Stage 1 of 6

Read it through once

"Well," said William, "I haven't been making a book as long as some of them, but since you ask me what I think I tell you straight. I don't care a damn whether they backs according to their judgment, or their dreams, or their fancy. The cove that follows favourites, or the cove that backs a jockey's mount, the cove that makes an occasional bet when he hears of a good thing, the cove that bets regular, 'cording to a system--the cove, yer know, what doubles every time--or the cove that bets as the mood takes him--them and all the other coves, too numerous to be mentioned, I'm glad to do business with. I cries out to one as 'eartily as to another: 'The old firm, the old firm, don't forget the old firm.... What can I do for you to-day, sir?' There's but one sort of cove I can't abide."