“No, the big Horner sent up to Mother Butterfly’s for some more stuff, not so mild, and then Ted set upon me, and said it was all because of me that Vale Leston had to live like a boiling of teetotal frogs and toads, just to please the little baronet’s lady mamma, but I was a Dutchman all the same, and should sell them yet--I sucked it in so well, and they talked of seeing how much I could stand. Something about my governor, and here--that word in the Catechism.” “Ah!” gasped Clement, fairly clutching his arm, “and what spared you?” “Horner came down, and Sweetie Bob, that’s the errand-boy, and there was a bother about the money, for Bob wasn’t to leave anything without being paid, and while they were jawing about that, Merry laid hold of me and said, ‘Come and look for the aralia.’ They got to shouting and singing, and I don’t think they saw what was doing. They were nasty songs, and Merry touched me and said, ‘Let us go after the aralia.’ We got away without their missing us at first, but they ran after us when they found it out, and if you had not been there, Uncle Clem--” “Thank God I was! Now, Adrian, first tell me, did you taste this stuff? You said you sucked it in.” “Well, I did, a little. You know, uncle, one cannot always be made a baby. Women don’t understand, you know, and don’t know what a fool it makes a man to have them always after him, and have everything put out of his way like a precious infant, and people drinking it on the sly like Gerald, or--” “Or me, eh, Adrian? I can tell you that I never tasted it for thirty years, and now only as a medicine. Lance, never.” “But they did not treat you like a baby, and never let you see so much as a glass of beer.” “Well, I am going to treat you like a man, but it is a sorrowful history that I have to tell you. You know that your mother and Aunt Wilmet are twin sisters?” “Oh yes, though Aunt Wilmet is stout and jolly, and mother ever so much prettier and more delicate and nice.” “Yes, from ill-health. She is never free from suffering.” “I know. Old Dr. May said there was no help for it.” “Do you know what caused that ill-health? My boy, they spoke of your father to-day--brutes that they were,” he could not help muttering. “Yes, he died when I was a week old.” “He had ruined himself when quite a young man, body, soul, and estate--and you too, beforehand, in estate, and broken your mother’s heart and health by being given up to that miserable habit from which we want to save you.” “I thought it was only poor men that got drunk and beat their wives” (more knowledge, by the bye, than he was supposed to possess). “He did not beat her?” “Oh no, no,” said Clement, “but he as surely destroyed all her happiness, and made you and your sisters very poor for your station in life, so that it is really hard to educate you, and you will have to work for yourself and them. And at only thirty-six years old his life was cut off.”