“Oh, Ettie,” groaned Fred, “you’re entirely mistaken.  Why, they’d laugh right in my face, if they didn’t get angry and knock me down.  Reformers want to be older men, better men, men like your father, for instance, if people are to listen to them.”

“Father says they need to be men who understand the nature of those they are talking to,” replied Esther; and you once told me that you understood Moshier and Crayme perfectly.”

“But just think of what they are, Ettie,” pleaded Fred.  “Moshier is a contractor, and Crayme’s a steamboat captain; such men never reform, though they always are good fellows.  Why, if I were to speak to either of them on the subject, they’d laugh in my face, or curse me.  The only way I was able to make peace with them for stopping drinking myself, was to say that I did it to please my wife.”

“Did they accept that as sufficient excuse?” asked Esther.

“Yes,” said Fred reluctantly, and biting his lips over this slip of his tongue.

“Then you’ve set them a good example, and I can’t believe its effect will be lost,” said Esther.

“I sincerely hope it won’t,” said Fred, very willing to seem a reformer at heart, “nobody would be gladder than I to see those fellows with wives as happy as mine seems to be.”

“Then why don’t you follow it up, Fred, dear, and make sure of your hopes being realized?  You can’t imagine how much happier I would be if I could meet those dear women without feeling that I had to hide the joy that’s so hard to keep to myself.”

The conversation continued with considerable strain to Fred’s amiability; but his sophistry was no match for his wife’s earnestness, and he was finally compelled to promise that he would make an appeal to Crayme, with whom he had a business engagement, on the arrival of Crayme’s boat, the Excellence.

Before the whistles of the steamer were next heard, however, Esther learned something of the sufferings of would-be reformers, and found cause to wonder who was to endure most that Mrs. Crayme should have a sober husband; for Fred was alternately cross, moody, abstracted, and inattentive, and even sullenly remarked at his breakfast-table one morning that he shouldn’t be sorry if the Excellence were to blow up, and leave Mrs. Crayme to find her happiness in widowhood.  But no such luck befell the lady:  the whistle-signals of the Excellence were again heard in the river, and the nature of Fred’s business with the captain made it unadvisable for Fred to make an excuse for leaving the boat unvisited.