"Yes, I know; but it was meeting Tom Haines and Frank that set me thinking. Suppose we should ever come to be like Tom, Willy!"
"We need not, unless we like, Walter."
"But we can never tell how soon we may fall into temptation; I think mother is right, after all."
"What about?" asked Willy.
"She says it would be better for the world if there were no such places as 'The Plough.'"
"Oh, Walter!"
"It's quite true, Willy; and she says also that beer and spirits are really necessary to no one, and that at least a fourth part of the earnings of every working man who drinks beer are spent in the public-house."
Willy Day know that his father went every evening for an hour or so to "The Plough," but he never remembered seeing him the worse for drink, and he told Walter so.
"I was not speaking of regular drunkards, Willy, when I spoke about a fourth part of a man's wages. Drunkards often spend half, and sometimes more than that, of what they earn in the public-house. That is why Frank Hardy's family are so badly off; the greater part of all the money earned by Frank's father goes to 'The Plough.' But even those people who never 'get the worse for drink,' as you call it, how much money they spend upon it, and what a number of home-comforts—better food, better clothes, and something put by against a rainy day—that money would have procured!"
Walter had arrived at the door of his mother's house as he uttered the last words, and he and Willy stood still for a moment.