"I think I do."
"I thought you did else I am not sure that my pride would have allowed me to open my lips. Well, do you know there is something you might do to help him?"
"Alice."
"No, you are not to interrupt me. I don't mean anything insulting. There are ways of which I would be more sure, and they are connected with you, but I know they are out of the question. I am not going to talk of them. But there is something I want you to do. I want you to talk with mamma. It is of no use for me to say a word to her. There are family reasons why she is specially vexed with me just now, and will not listen reasonably to anything that I might say. But she respects you, and likes you, and you have more or less influence over her. Are you willing to use it for Louis' sake?"
"But, my dear Alice, I do not understand you in the least. What could I say to your mother that she does not already know? and in any case, how could she materially help your brother? He needs the help of his own will."
"That is true, but there are ways in which mamma might help him, if she would. I can tell you of some. In the first place, you are mistaken as to her knowledge. She knows, it is true, that he takes more wine occasionally than is good for him, and has violent headaches in consequence; but she does not know that two nights in a week, at least, he comes home intoxicated! Isn't that a terrible thing to say of one's brother? What has become of the Ansted pride, when I can say it to almost a stranger?"
"Why does not your mother know?"
"Partly because she is blind, and partly because I have promised Louis not to tell her, and partly because there are reasons why it would be especially hard on my mother to have this knowledge brought to her through me. You see there are reasons enough. Now for what she could do. Claire, she fairly drives him into temptation. There is a certain house in the city which she is very anxious to see united to ours. She contrives daily pretexts for sending Louis there, and it is almost impossible for him to go there without coming home the worse for liquor. I wish I could talk more plainly to you. I will tell you this. There is a brother as well as a sister in that house, and it has been a pet dream of my mother to exchange the sons and daughters. It is a romantic, Old World scheme, grown up with the families from their early days; and mamma, who has never been accustomed to having her plans thwarted, is in danger of seeing all of these come to naught, and more than half believes that I am plotting against it for Louis, having first shown myself to be an undutiful and ungrateful daughter. Do you see how entirely my tongue is silenced? I wonder if you do understand?"
"I understand, my dear friend, and I thank you for your confidence; but I do not see how a stranger can help, or indeed, can interfere in any way, without being guilty of gross rudeness. How could I hope to approach your mother on such subjects as these, without having her feel herself insulted?"