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When he gets back to the betting-ring, the bookmakers are shouting hoarsely against each other. Liberal is a very hot favourite. They are shouting: “I’ll take two to one. I’ll take two to one. Five to one bar one. A hundred to eight Green Cloak.” He feels almost sure Liberal will win, but Green Cloak–he wishes he had asked the tobacconist where he got his information from. Anyhow, half-a-sovereign doesn’t matter much. He goes up to a bookmaker, and says: “Ten shillings Green Cloak.” The bookmaker turns to his clerk and says: “Six pound five to ten shillings Green Cloak,” gives a red-white-and-blue card with his name and a number on it; the other takes the card, writes on the back of it the name of the horse and the amount of the bet, and makes for the stand to see the race. The horses have now come out, and are off one after another to the starting-post. Green Cloak would be hard to miss because of his jockey’s colours–old gold, scarlet sleeves, and green and black quartered cap. The bell has hardly rung to announce that the race has begun when men in the crowd begin to dogmatise about the result. One man keeps saying: “Green Cloak wins this race. Green Cloak wins this race.” Another says: “Liberal leads.” Another says: “No; that’s Jumping Frog.” To the unaccustomed eye the horses seem as close to each other as a swarm of bees. Suddenly, however, a bay horse springs forward and seems to put a length between itself and the others at every stride. The people in the stand shout: “Liberal! Liberal!” It wins by about ten lengths. Green Cloak is second, but a bad second. The crowd begins to pour down from the stand again. Those who have won wait near the bookmakers till the winner has been to the unsaddling enclosure and the announcement “All right” is made. Then the bookmakers begin to pay out, and the crowd moves off to the paddock again to see the horses for the next race.

Friends stop each other and exchange information in low voices. Others do their best to listen in the hope of overhearing information: “I hear Tomsk,” “Johnnie says lay your last penny on Glasgow Pet,” “I’m going to back Submarine.” And the parade of the horses, the hoisting of the names of the starters and jockeys, the laying of the bets, and the climbing of the grand stand are all gone through over and over again. The betting man has no time even for a drink. To the casual onlooker a day’s horse-racing has the appearance of a day’s holiday. But the racing man knows better. He is collecting information, coming to decisions, wandering among the bookies in the hope of getting a good price, climbing into the grand stand and descending from it, studying the points of the horses all the time with as little chance of leisure as though he were a stockbroker during a financial crisis or a sailor on a sinking ship.

Perhaps, in the train on the way home from the races, he may relax a little. Certainly, if he has backed Cutandrun, he will. For Cutandrun won at ten to one, and his pocket is full of five-pound notes. He feels quite jocular now that the strain is over. He makes puns on the names of the defeated horses. “Lie Low lay low all right,” he announces to the compartment, indifferent to the scowls of the man in the corner who had backed it. “Hopscotch didn’t hop quite fast enough.” Were he tipsy, he could not jest more fluently. His jokes are small, but be not too severe on him. The man has had a hard day. Wait but an hour, and care will descend on him again. He will not have sat down to dinner in his hotel for three minutes till someone will be saying to him: “Have you heard anything for the Cup to-morrow?” There is no six-hours day for the betting man. He is the drudge of chance for every waking hour. He is enviable only for one thing. He knows what to talk about to barbers.