"Slightly!" chuckled Tode over the remembrance of his cellar life, and knowing by a sort of instinct that these two had never been inside of such a place in their lives. Pliny continued his examination: "Don't you like the smell of it?" "First-rate." "Then why don't you take it?" "Ain't a going to." "But _why_?" And then for the first time his companion spoke: "Are you a total abstainer?" "What's them?" Both boys stopped to laugh ere they made answer. "Why people who think it wicked to 'touch, taste or handle,' you know. Say, Pliny, did you know there's quite an excitement on the subject up our way? Old Mousey is round trying to get all the folks to promise not to sell Joe any more brandy." "Stuff and nonsense!" oracularly pronounced Pliny, quoting the unanswerable argument of his elders. "Fact. And folks say Joe has been drunk more times in a week since than he ever was before." "Of course, that's the way it always works, trying to _make_ folks do what they won't do. Joe ought to be hung, though. What does a fellow want to be a fool for and go and get drunk? But say, Todie, why don't you drink a drop?" "I ain't a going to," was Tode's only answer. The two friends looked at each other curiously. "You're green," said Pliny, at last. "Yes," said Tode, promptly, "maybe; so's the moon." Whereat the two laughed and strolled away. "Isn't he a queer chap?" they said to each other as they went out into the snow. Meantime Tode looked after them for a moment before he began briskly to gather up the remains of the feast. Tode had some new ideas. He had formerly lived a stratum below the temperance movement; it had scarce troubled his father's cellar; so he had to-day discovered that there were others besides his mother who prayed their sons not to drink a drop of rum. Also that a young man who went and got drunk was considered a fool by elegant young men, such as he had just been serving. Also, and sharpest, these two evidently thought him "green." If they had said a thief or scamp Tode would have laughed, but "green!" that touched. "I'll show them a thing or to, maybe," he said, defiantly, as he seized a pile of plates and vanished.