Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 290: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE FEMALE GAMESTERS 273 presented to the female who sat next. In this manner it went the complete round, — Madge Somers being the only person who did not accept the proffered dram, for of all her vices a love of ardent spirits was not one. The fiery liquor gave an unnatural exhilaration to the spirits of those who were already excited by the fluctuating chances of the game. But it must be confessed that the whole proceedings of this den were in one sense orderly enough. If ever a player attempted to quarrel, or disputed some particular point, she was instantaneously called to order by the croupier, and the efiect was truly magical, for that woman had contrived to establish a despotic authority over the frequenters of the house, and thus was she in- valuable to her elder sister. An occasional oath passed unnoticed, but if anything really obscene or disgusting was said, it immediately called forth a severe rebuke, accom- panied by a threat of expulsion, in which menace the gen- erality of the players seemed perfectly ready to back the eroupier; for it must be understood, as already hinted, that there were several females present who called themselves “respectable married women.”’ It requires but little effort of the imagination to penetrate the circumstances under which some of these ‘‘ respectable married women ’’ visited this den. We may suppose one to be the wife of a man keeping a potato and coal shed; that she had gone out to collect a few little debts owing by the poorer customers in that neighbourhood, and that with the few shillings thus gathered into her purse she dropped in with the hope of converting them into as many guineas. If she lost, she would go home full of excuses to her husband: the debtors had not paid, she had fallen in with her friend Mrs. So-and-so, who had engaged her to supper, and hence her coming home so late. Perhaps the husband himself was at the public-house, and reeling home half-tipsy at a still later hour, was unaware of the time when his wife had entered. Very likely a quarrel might take place, originating on one side or the other, but what might be still more cer- tainly reckoned upon was that in the long run the principal profits of the business would go into the pocket of the woman keeping the gambling den, and insolvency would overtake the potato and coal shed. From the little sketch thus hurriedly given, the reader CONNIE DOOKS (S(O)