over her. Presently she began again; her voice had a little strain in
its tone.

"This is something for you and me to consider; for you and me, and
other women who can do anything. Christina, did you ever think about
the use of wine?"

"Wine?" echoed Miss Thayer, a good deal mystified. "The use of it? I
don't know any use of it, except to give people, gentlemen, something
to talk of at dinner. Oh, it is good in sickness, I suppose. What are
you thinking of?"

"I am thinking of the harm it does," said Dolly in a low voice.

"Harm? What harm? You are not one of those absurd people I have heard
of, who cut down their apple-trees for fear the apples will be made
into cider?"

"I have no apple-trees to cut down," said Dolly. "But don't you know,
Christina, that there is such a thing as drinking too much wine? and
what comes of it?"

"Not among our sort of people," said Christina. "I know there are such
things as drunkards; but they are in the lower classes, who drink
whisky and gin. Not among gentlemen."

Dolly choked, and turned her face away to hide the eyes full of tears.

"Too much wine?" Christina repeated. "One may have too much of
anything. Too much fire will burn up your house; yet fire is a good
thing."

"That's only burning up your house," said Dolly sorrowfully.

"_Only_ burning up your house! Dolly Copley, what are you thinking of?"

"I am thinking of something infinitely worse. I am thinking of a man
losing his manhood; of families losing their stay and their joy,
because the father, or the husband, or the brother, has lost
himself!--gone down below his standing as an intellectual
creature;--become a mere animal, given up to low pleasures which make
him sink lower and lower in the scale of humanity. I am thinking of
_his_ loss and of _their_ loss, Christina. I am thinking of the
dreadfulness of being ashamed of the dearest thing you have, and the
way hearts break under it. And don't you know that when the love of
wine and the like gets hold of a person, it is stronger than he is? It
makes a slave of him, so that he cannot help himself."

Christina's thoughts made a rapid flight over all the persons for whom
Dolly could possibly fear such a fate, or in whom she could possibly
have seen such an example. But Mr. St. Leger had the clear, fresh
colour of perfect health and condition; Mr. Copley loved wine
evidently, but drank it like a gentleman, and gave, to her eyes, no
sign of being enslaved. What