"How hopelessly sad was the tone of those words.
"When the carriage cleared at Peterborough, and we were left alone, I drew nearer to him, and asked if I should hold the baby for a few minutes. I assure you its quietness was touching. It seemed unaccustomed to notice or cheerfulness, and when I cooed at him, he looked wonderingly at me with no answering smile."
"Poor little baby!" said Ada.
"Then the broken-hearted father told me his story, impelled to it, I suppose, by my sympathy and his own sad need.
"He had married for love, and for years had been perfectly happy.
"He and his wife kept a draper's shop in York, and had got on comfortably, and been able to educate their children. By-and-by, he noticed a gradual change in his wife; he thought it was illness, and used to comfort and nurse her with the utmost solicitude. But the often-recurring symptoms, which no doctoring relieved, at last made him consult a physician, who took him aside and told him what was the cause of it all.
"'She takes spirits secretly,' he said.
"Then the poor man returned to his ruined home.
"He tried to stop it by entreaty, by denial, by commands; all to no purpose. The business was slighted, the children were neglected, the home was left ungoverned, and he had to remove one child after another from her influence.
"At first she had promised amendment, but the craving for the exciting, stimulating glass was too strong to be withstood, and she let all her resolutions go to the winds.