"Once," was the reply. "Once, son, and I've been thinking about it
ever since. She was the right one for me, but she got the notion I
wasn't the right one for her. Sometimes it happens that way. She
found the man she thought she wanted, and I took to runnin' round the
country with race horses. After that she was sure I was a lost soul
and hell-bent for certain. This was a long time ago--before you was
born, I reckon."

After a silence, the Kid asked another question:

"Well, at that, the race-track game is no game for a married man, is
it?"

"M-m-well," answered the patriarch thoughtfully, "that's as how a
man's wife looks at it. Some of 'em think it ain't no harm to gamble
s'long's you can win, but the average woman, Frank, she don't want
the hosses runnin' for her bread and butter. You can't blame her for
that, because a woman is dependent by nature. If the Lord had figured
her to git out an' hustle with the men, He'd have built her
different, but He made her to be p'tected and shelteredlike. A single
man can hustle and bat round an' go hungry if he wants to, but he
ain't got no right to ask a woman to gamble her vittles on any
proposition whatever."

"Ain't it the truth!" ejaculated the Bald-faced Kid, with a depth of
feeling quite foreign to his nature. "You surely spoke a mouthful
then!" Old Man Curry raised one eyebrow slightly and continued his
discourse.

"For a man even to figger on gettin' married, he ought to have
something comin' in steady--something that bad hosses an' worse men
can't take away from him. He oughtn't to bet at all, but if he does
it ought to be on a mortal cinch. There ain't many real cinches on a
race track, Frank; not the kind that a married man'd be justified in
bettin' the rent money on. Yes, sir, a man thinkin' 'bout gettin'
married ought to have a job--and stick to it!"

"And that job oughtn't to be on a race track either," supplemented
the Kid, his eyes fixed on the cigarette which he was rolling. "But
that ain't all I wanted to ask you about, old-timer. Suppose, now, a
fellow had a girl that was too good for him--a girl that wouldn't
wipe her feet on a gambler if she knew it, and was brought up to
think that betting was wrong. And suppose now that this fellow wasn't
even a gambler. Suppose he was a hustler--a tout--but he'd asked the
girl to marry him without telling her what he was, and she'd said she
would. What ought that fellow to do?"

Old Man Curry took his time about