“Indeed,” answered James, “I _was_ anything but a good manager eighteen months ago: as you well know, I was in rags, never at my work of a Monday, and seldom on Tuesday. My poor wife, my gentle patient Mary, often bore hard words; and though she will not own it, I fear still harder blows, when I had driven away my senses. My children were pale, half-starved, naked creatures, disputing a potato with the pig my wife tried to keep to pay the rent, well knowing I would never do it. Now----” “But the cordial, my boy!” interrupted Andrew, “the cordial!--sure I believe every word of what you’ve been telling me is as true as gospel; ain’t there hundreds, ay, thousands, at this moment on Ireland’s blessed ground, that can tell the same story. But the cordial! and to think of your never owning it before: is it ginger, or anniseed, or peppermint?” “None of these--and yet it’s the _rale_ thing, my boy.” “Well, then,” persisted Andrew, “let’s have a drop of it; you’re not going, I’m sure, to drink by yerself--_and as I’ve broke the afternoon_”---- A very heavy shadow passed over James’s face, for he saw that there must have been something hotter than even ginger in the “_temperance_ cordial,” as it is falsely called, that Andrew had taken, or else he would have endeavoured to redeem lost time, not to waste more; and he thought how much better the REAL temperance cordial was, that, instead of exciting the brain, only warms the heart. “No,” he replied after a pause, “I must go and finish what I was about; but this evening at seven o’clock meet me at the end of our lane, and then I’ll be very happy of your company.” Andrew was sorely puzzled to discover what James’s cordial could be, and was forced to confess to himself that he hoped it would be different from what he had taken that afternoon, which certainly had made him feel confused and inactive. At the appointed hour the friends met in the lane. “Which way do we go?” inquired Andrew. “Home,” was James’s brief reply. “Oh, you _take_ it at home?” said Andrew. “I _make_ it at home,” answered James. “Well,” observed Andrew, “that’s very good of the woman _that owns ye_. Now, mine takes on so about a drop of any thing, that she’s as hard almost on the cordials as she used to be on the whisky.” “My Mary helps to make mine,” observed James. “And do you bottle it or keep it on draught?” inquired Andrew, very much interested in the “cordial” question. James laughed very heartily at this, and answered, “Oh, I keep mine on draught--always on draught; there’s nothing like having plenty of a good thing, so I keep mine always on draught;” and then James laughed again, and so heartily, that Andrew thought surely _his_ real temperance cordial must contain something quite as strong as what he had blamed him for taking.