quite strict teetotal; then
there's cider, then there's cherry-brandy; and if that don't do, then
there's teetotal physic."

"Teetotal physic! I don't understand you."

"Don't you, sir? that's like your innocence. Why, it's just this way.
There's a lady teetotaller, and she's a little out of sorts; so she
sends a note to the doctor, and he sends back a nice bottle of stuff.
It's uncommon good and spirituous-like to smell at, but then it's
medicine, only the drugs ain't down in what the chemists call their
`Farming-up-here.'"

"I never heard of that before," remarked Frank.

"No, I don't suppose, sir, as ever you did. And then there's the
teetotal gents; they does it much more free and easy. They've got what
the Catholics calls a `dispensary' from their Pope, (and their Pope's
the doctor), to take just whatever they likes as a medicine--oh, only as
a medicine; so they carries about with 'em a doctor's superscription,
which says just this: `Let the patient take as much beer, or wine, or
spirits, as he can swallow.'"

"A pretty picture you have drawn," laughed Frank. "I'm afraid there's
not much chance of making _you_ an abstainer."

"Nor you neither, Mr Frank, I hope. Why, I should be ashamed to see my
cheerful, handsome young master, (you must forgive me, sir, for being so
bold), turned into a sour-looking, turnip-faced, lantern-jawed, whining
teetotaller."

"Why, I thought you said just now," said the other, "that they all take
drink on the sly; if that's the case, it can't be total abstinence that
spoils their beauty."

Juniper looked a little at fault, but immediately replied,--

"Well, sir, at any rate total abstinence will never do for you. Why,
you'll have no peace up at the hall, especially in the shooting season,
if you mean to take up with them exotic notions. Be a man, sir, and
asseverate your independence. Show that you can take too much or too
little as you have a mind. I wouldn't be a slave, sir. `Britons never
shall be slaves.'"

Here the conversation closed. The tempter had so far gained his end
that he had made Frank disinclined to join himself at present to the
body of stanch abstainers. He would wait and see--he preferred
moderation, it was more manly, more self-reliant. Ah, there was his
grievous mistake. Self-reliant! yes, but that self was blinded, cheated
by Satan; it was already on the tempter's side. So Frank put off, at
any rate for the present, joining the abstainer