That night, when Anna and I were alone in our room, the former sat for a time in deep thought, saying, when I at last told her the clock was striking eleven, “I wonder who Ada is!”
I wondered so, too, and my interest was not at all diminished when the next morning, at the breakfast table, Aunt Charlotte said to her son, “Herbert, I shall be busy this morning making arrangements about a school for Rosa, and I wish you’d go in and see Ada, will you?”
“Yes, yes, I will,” said he, rather impatiently, adding, “and if I don’t find her any better, I mean to assume the responsibility of discharging that old superannuated greeny who attends her, and install Dr. Clayton in his place. I took quite a fancy to him, and I’m going to give him my patronage!”
“Oh, I wish you would!” I exclaimed involuntarily; for in spite of the wrong he had done me, I cherished no feeling of animosity towards him.
Then, again, I had heard that it was sometimes very difficult for a young physician to obtain much practice in a strange place with no one to help him, and I thought, perhaps, Herbert’s “patronage” might be of some avail.
“I see,” said Herbert laughingly, “there has been something, and though he is a married man, you still feel an interest in him, and want him to succeed; all right, and I’ll do what I can to help him; for I verily believe he’ll get Tom on his legs again in spite of what the temperance folks say about his blood’s being all turned into whisky!”
At these words a shadow passed over Aunt Charlotte’s face, but it was soon chased away by the next remark of Herbert, which was, “Ain’t you glad, mother, I reformed before I got to be as bad as Tom? Why, girls (addressing Anna and me), I haven’t drank a drop since—since—how long is it mother, since I left off”—drinking he could not say, so he finally added, “left off imbibing occasionally?”
There was a look of happiness on that mother’s face, as she replied, “Almost a year.”
Yes, ’twas almost a year since her son had tasted ardent spirits, and had she not good reasons for thinking he would never fall again? Assured of this fact, how proud she would have been of her only boy; for, aside from this great error, he possessed many noble, generous qualities; and during my stay in Boston, I found that, in spite of his well-known habits, he was a pretty general favorite. Oh, how lovingly my aunt looked after him when he went out, and how earnestly she watched him when he came in, and all the while she was tempting him beyond what most men could bear; for regularly on her dinner-table appeared either porter, champagne, or madeira, one taste of which would set him all on fire. But, unfortunately, she belonged to that class of fashionable people who deem the wine-bottle a necessary appendage to the dinner table, and if, in the sequel, her son should fill a drunkard’s grave, would there be any just cause why, in her anguish, she should murmur at Providence for having dealt with her thus harshly? Ought she not rather to blame herself for having thus daily tempted him to sin by placing before him what she well knew was sure to work his ruin?
But to our story. We were at dinner when Herbert came in from his morning ramble, and taking his accustomed seat at the table, he said to his mother, “I called on Ada as you desired, and found her sitting up in a rose-colored dressing-gown, which she thinks very becoming to her, I know, for she sat directly opposite the mirror, and I should not dare tell how many times I caught her casting admiring glances at herself.”