The door opened and Paul Clifford, Joe Gough, and Belle Gordon entered.

“Here Mrs. Gough,” said Paul Clifford, “as we children used to say.  Here’s your husband safe and sound, and I will add, a member of our reformed club and we have come to congratulate you upon the event.”

“My dear friends, I am very thankful to you for your great kindness, I don’t think I shall ever be able to repay you.”

“Don’t be uneasy darling,” said Belle, “we are getting our pay as we go along, we don’t think the cause of humanity owes us anything.”  “Yes,” said Joe seating himself by the bed side with an air of intense gratification.  “Here is my badge, I did not want to leave the meeting without having this to show you.”

“This evening,” said Mrs. Gough smiling through her tears, “reminds me of a little temperance song I learned when a child, I think it commenced with these words: 

 “And are you sure the news is true? 
  Are you sure my John has joined? 
  I can’t believe the happy news,
  And leave my fears behind,
  If John has joined and drinks no more,
  The happiest wife am I
  That ever swept a cabin floor,
  Or sung a lullaby.

“That’s just the way I feel to-night, I haven’t been so happy before for years.”

“And I hope,” said Mr. Clifford, “that you will have many happy days and nights in the future.”

“And I hope so too,” said Joe, shaking hands with Paul and Belle as they rose to go.

Mr. Clifford accompanied Belle to her door, and as they parted she said, “This is a glorious work in which it is our privilege to clasp hands.”

“It is and I hope,” but as the words rose to his lips, he looked into the face of Belle, and it was so radiant with intelligent tenderness and joy, that she seemed to him almost like a glorified saint, a being too precious high and good for common household uses, and so the remainder of the sentence died upon his lips and he held his peace.

Chapter XV

“I have resolved to dissolve partnership with Charles,” said Augustine Romaine to his wife, the next morning after his son’s return from the Champaign supper at John Anderson’s.

“Oh! no you are not in earnest, are you?  You seem suddenly to have lost all patience with Charlie.”

“Yes I have, and I have made up my mind that I am not going to let him hang like a millstone on our business.  No, if he will go down, I am determined he shall not drag me down with him.  See what a hurt it would be to us, to have it said, ’Don’t trust your case with the Romaine’s for the Junior member of that firm is a confirmed drunkard.’”

“Well, Augustine you ought to know best, but it seems like casting him off, to dissolve partnership with him.”

“I can’t help it, if he persists in his downward course he must take the consequences.  Charles has had every advantage; when other young lawyers have had to battle year after year with obscurity and poverty, he entered into a business that was already established and flourishing.  What other men were struggling for, he found ready made to his hand, and if he chooses to throw away every advantage and make a complete wreck of himself, I can’t help it.”