"That's only burning up your house," said Dolly sorrowfully.
"Only burning up your house! Dolly Copley, what are you thinking of?"
"I am thinking of something infinitely worse. I am thinking of a man losing his manhood; of families losing their stay and their joy, because the father, or the husband, or the brother, has lost himself!—gone down below his standing as an intellectual creature;—become a mere animal, given up to low pleasures which make him sink lower and lower in the scale of humanity. I am thinking of his loss and of their loss, Christina. I am thinking of the dreadfulness of being ashamed of the dearest thing you have, and the way hearts break under it. And don't you know that when the love of wine and the like gets hold of a person, it is stronger than he is? It makes a slave of him, so that he cannot help himself."
Christina's thoughts made a rapid flight over all the persons for whom Dolly could possibly fear such a fate, or in whom she could possibly have seen such an example. But Mr. St. Leger had the clear, fresh colour of perfect health and condition; Mr. Copley loved wine evidently, but drank it like a gentleman, and gave, to her eyes, no sign of being enslaved. What could Dolly be thinking of? Her mother was out of the question.
"I don't make out what you are at, Dolly," she said. "Such things do not happen in our class of society."
"Yes, they do. They happen in every class. And the highest ought to set an example to the lowest."
"No use if they did. Anyhow, Dolly, it is nothing you and I can meddle with."
"I think we ought not to have wine on our tables."
"Mercy! Everybody does that."
"It is offering temptation."