Chapter 50 - Page 2

innocent
country fellows who had trotted there on horseback--sought, by loud
and noisy talk and pretended play, to entrap some unwary customer,
while the gentlemen confederates (of more villainous aspect still,
in clean linen and good clothes), betrayed their close interest in
the concern by the anxious furtive glance they cast on all
new comers. These would be hanging on the outskirts of a wide circle
of people assembled round some itinerant juggler, opposed, in his
turn, by a noisy band of music, or the classic game of 'Ring the
Bull,' while ventriloquists holding dialogues with wooden dolls, and
fortune-telling women smothering the cries of real babies, divided
with them, and many more, the general attention of the company.
Drinking-tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages,
hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives
and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that
were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during
the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of
interest, was now divided among a hundred; and look where you would,
there was a motley assemblage of feasting, laughing, talking,
begging, gambling, and mummery.

Of the gambling-booths there was a plentiful show, flourishing in
all the splendour of carpeted ground, striped hangings, crimson
cloth, pinnacled roofs, geranium pots, and livery servants. There
were the Stranger's club-house, the Athenaeum club-house, the
Hampton club-house, the St James's club-house, and half a mile of
club-houses to play IN; and there were ROUGE-ET-NOIR, French hazard,
and other games to play AT. It is into one of these booths that our
story takes its way.

Fitted up with three tables for the purposes of play, and crowded
with players and lookers on, it was, although the largest place of
the kind upon the course, intensely hot, notwithstanding that a
portion of the canvas roof was rolled back to admit more air, and
there were two doors for a free passage in and out. Excepting one
or two men who, each with a long roll of half-crowns, chequered with
a few stray sovereigns, in his left hand, staked their money at
every roll of the ball with a business-like sedateness which showed
that they were used to it, and had been playing all day, and most
probably all the day before, there was no very distinctive character
about the players, who were chiefly young men, apparently attracted
by curiosity, or staking small sums as part of the amusement of the
day, with no very great interest in winning or losing. There were
two persons present, however, who, as peculiarly good specimens of a
class, deserve a passing notice.

Of these, one was a man of six or eight and