“Dear me, how pretty you have grown! What a colour! I’m so glad to see you looking so well. How happy dear Miss Tremont would be to see you now. She was always afraid you would be delicate. But we can’t wish her back, can we, Patience?” “There’s no use wishing anything undone. Where are you going?” “Where I am going to take you. Now, don’t ask any questions, but just come along.” Patience, hoping that the destination was a fair where she could get luncheon, followed submissively, and evaded Miss Beale’s personal inquiries as best she could. “How does the Temperance Cause get on?” she asked at length. “Oh, just the same! Just the same!” said Miss Beale, with a cheerful sigh. “One makes slow progress in this wicked world; all we can do is to trust in the Lord and do our humble best. Mariaville has three new saloons, and the father of one of my scholars beat him nearly to death the other day for coming to the Loyal Legion class; but we’ll win in the end.” “Meanwhile are you as much interested as ever?” asked Patience, curiously. “Oh, my!” Miss Beale gave an almost hilarious laugh. “Well, I should think so. How could I ever lose interest in the Lord’s work? Why, I never even get discouraged.” “It has occurred to me, sometimes—since I have been away and met all sorts of people—that if you really were Temperance you might have more chance of success.” “If we were what?” “Temperance in the actual meaning of the word. You’re not, you know; you’re teetotalists. That is the reason you antagonise so many thousands of men who might be glad to help you with their vote otherwise. The average gentleman—and there are thousands upon thousands of him—never gets drunk, and enjoys his wine at dinner and even his whiskey and water. He doesn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t have it, and there isn’t any. It adds to the pleasures of life. Those are the people that really represent Temperance, and naturally they have no sympathy with a movement that they consider narrow-minded and an unwarrantable intrusion.” Miss Beale shook her head vigorously. “It is a sin to touch it!” she exclaimed, “and sooner or later they will all be drunkards, every one of them. The blessing of God is not on alcohol, and it should be banished from the face of the earth.” Patience was in a perverse and almost ugly mood. “Tell me,” she said, “how do you reconcile your animosity to alcohol with the story of Christ’s turning the water into wine at the wedding feast?” “It wasn’t wine,” said Miss Beale, triumphantly; “it was grape juice. Wine takes days to ferment, so the water couldn’t possibly have become wine all in a minute.” Patience burst into laughter. “But, Miss Beale, it was a miracle anyhow, wasn’t it? If he could perform a miracle at all it would have been as easy to make wine out of water as grape juice.”