"She certainly has. When you come to visit us, Mrs. Lute, you shall hear this Cornish singing-bird. Poor girl, she is a sad cripple, yet she makes herself very useful, attends to her father's cottage, and even does gardening!"
"She uses a pair of crutches as a rule," Margaret explained, "but when she is gardening, she somehow manages to hop about on one, so that she has a hand free to work with. Poor Salome! Her father drinks, and that is a great trouble to her."
"I should think so, indeed!" Mrs. Lute commented. "She ought to try to persuade him to take the pledge. Total abstinence from all intoxicants is the only thing for some people."
"Father says," Margaret was beginning, when Mrs. Fowler somewhat abruptly changed the conversation by inquiring for a mutual friend in town. It struck the little girl that her mother did not wish her to air her father's teetotal views, so during the homeward drive she recurred to the subject.
"Mother, I was going to tell Mrs. Lute that we are all teetotalers now," she said. "Don't you want her to know?"
Mrs. Fowler hesitated and frowned slightly, refraining from meeting her little daughter's gravely inquiring gaze.
"I suppose she will have to know, if she comes to stay with us at Greystone," she responded in tones of annoyance. "I had forgotten your father's fad when I invited her."
"Oh, mother, don't call it a fad!" Margaret cried distressfully.
"That's what it is, child! Mrs. Lute is accustomed to take wine, yet no one can say she is not a strictly temperate woman. Your father, I do not doubt, would like her to be a total abstainer. Such nonsense! He used not to be so fastidious!" And Mrs. Fowler looked quite angry.
Margaret made no answer. She had perfect faith in her father's judgment, but she felt herself incapable of arguing the matter from his point of view.