It mattered not what people might
call him,--or even her. She had acted on her own judgment in marrying
him, and had been a fool; and now she would bear the punishment
without complaint.

When dinner was over Mrs. Parker helped the servant to remove the
dinner things from the single sitting-room, and the two men went out
to smoke their cigars in the covered porch. Mrs. Parker herself took
out the whisky and hot water, and sugar and lemons, and then returned
to have a little matronly discourse with her guest. "Does Mr. Lopez
ever take a drop too much?" she asked.

"Never," said Mrs. Lopez.

"Perhaps it don't affect him as it do Sexty. He ain't a
drinker;--certainly not. And he's one that works hard every day of
his life. But he's getting fond of it these last twelve months, and
though he don't take very much it hurries him and flurries him. If I
speaks at night he gets cross;--and in the morning when he gets up,
which he always do regular, though it's ever so bad with him, then I
haven't the heart to scold him. It's very hard sometimes for a wife
to know what to do, Mrs. Lopez."

"Yes, indeed." Emily could not but think how soon she herself had
learned that lesson.

"Of course I'd do anything for Sexty,--the father of my bairns, and
has always been a good husband to me. You don't know him, of course,
but I do. A right good man at bottom;--but so weak!"

"If he,--if he,--injures his health, shouldn't you talk to him
quietly about it?"

"It isn't the drink as is the evil, Mrs. Lopez, but that which makes
him drink. He's not one as goes a mucker merely for the pleasure.
When things are going right he'll sit out in our arbour at home, and
smoke pipe after pipe, playing with the children, and one glass of
gin and water cold will see him to bed. Tobacco, dry, do agree with
him, I think. But when he comes to three or four goes of hot toddy, I
know it's not as it should be."

"You should restrain him, Mrs. Parker."

"Of course I should;--but how? Am I to walk off with the bottle
and disgrace him before the servant girl? Or am I to let the
children know as their father takes too much? If I was as much as
to make one fight of it, it'd be all over Ponder's End that he's
a drunkard;--which he ain't. Restrain him;--oh, yes! If I could
restrain that gambling instead of regular business! That's what I'd
like to restrain."

"Does he gamble?"

"What is it but gambling that he and Mr. Lopez is a-doing together?
Of course