erfectly right to get drunk
Saturday afternoon."

"Yes, it seems a terrible waste; but if she has children, she will be
able to do more for them than her mother has done for her, and they will
have her inheritance; so her life can't be wholly wasted, even if she is
not able to live up to her aspirations."

"James Towers! I--that--it's because you are a man that you can talk so!
I'm ashamed, and you a bishop! I wish--" Betty's eyes were full of angry
tears. "I only wish you were a woman. Slowly improve the race by bearing
children--giving them her inheritance! How would she bear them? Year
after year--ill fed, half clothed, slaving to raise enough to hold their
souls in their bodies, bringing them into the world for a brute who
knows only enough to make corn whiskey--to sell it--and drink it--and
reproduce his kind--when--when she knows all the time what ought to be!
Oh, James, James, think of it!"

"My dear, my dear, you forget, he has promised to repent and live a
different life. If he does, things will be better than we now see them.
If he does not change, then we may interfere--perhaps."

"I know, James. But--but--suppose he repents and she becomes his wife,
and puts aside all her natural tastes, and the studies she loves, and
goes on living with him there on the home place, and he does the best he
can--even. Don't you see that her nature is fine and--and so
different--even at the best, James, for her it will be death in life.
And then there is the terrible chance, after all, that he might go back
and be like his father before him, and then what?"

"Well, their lives and destinies are not in our hands; we can only
watch out for them and help them."

"James, he has been drunk twice!"

"Yes, yes, Betty, my little tempest, and if he gets drunk twice more,
and twice more, she will still forgive him until seventy times seven. We
must make her see that unless he keeps his promise to her, she must give
him up."

"Of course. I suppose that's all we can do. I--don't know what you'll
think of me, Doctor Thryng; I'm a dreadful scold. If James were not an
angel--"

"It's perfectly delicious. I would rather hear you scold than--"

"Than hear James preach," laughed the bishop. "I agree with you."

"I agree with her," said David, emphatically. "It ought to be stopped
if--"

"If it ought to be, it will be. What do you think she said to me about
it when I went to reason with her? 'If Christ can forgive and stand such