"Yes, and would go if it were not for—Mr. Chessney, if you could make mamma understand. No one seems able to. Claire Benedict has tried and failed; and what she fails in, perhaps can not be done. I don't know, but something must be done, and that speedily."
Almost Claire Benedict's words repeated. The newcomer walked home in almost silence. As they neared Harry's door, he said:
"What is young Ansted about just now?"
"Drinking hard, sir; he is running down hill very fast. If you don't get him away with you, I am afraid he will go to the dogs in a hurry."
"Is he still on terms of special intimacy with the VanMarters?"
"Well, as to that, I do not know. Things look mixed. He rails against Willis VanMarter once in a while, when he has been taking enough to make him imprudent, and Miss Alice seems to have broken with them altogether; at least, Willis does not come out any more, I think, and Miss Alice is not in town often; but Mrs. Ansted seems to be as intimate with them as ever, and Louis goes there with his mother. I don't know anything about it, but it looks like a house divided against itself. If I had such a mother as Louis Ansted has, I don't believe I would try to be anybody."
"Mothers don't seem to count for much sometimes, my boy."
"You mean with their sons, and I dare say you mean me, Uncle Harold; but it is not true. My mother always counted for ten times more than you think. It was she who held me back. If Louis Ansted had a tenth part of the craving for liquor that I have, with his mother to push him, he would have been gone long ago, beyond reach. I don't know but he is now. He has been going down very fast in the last few weeks."
"What is the accelerating cause?"