He did not answer, only fumbled with the door-knob as she stood on the step in the brilliant moonlight.

“Give it up!” urged Nellie.  “It makes things worse and they’re bad enough at the best.  It’s not right to your wife and the children.”

“I don’t go on the spree often,” pleaded Mr. Hobbs.

“Not as often as some,” admitted Nellie, “but if it’s only once in a life-time it’s too often.  A man who has drink in him isn’t a man.  He makes himself lower than the beasts and we’re low enough as it is without going lower ourselves.  He hurts himself and he hurts his family and he hurts his mates.  He’s worse than a blackleg.”

“I don’t see as it’s so bad as that,” protested Mr. Hobbs.

“Yes, it is,” insisted Nellie, quickly.  “Every bit as bad.  It’s drink that makes most of the blacklegs, anyway.  Most of them are men whose manhood has been drowned out of them with liquor and the weak men in the unions are the drunkards who have no heart when the whisky’s out of them.  Everybody knows that.  And when men who aren’t as bad feel down-hearted and despairing instead of bracing up and finding out what makes it they cheer up at a pub and imagine they’re jolly good fellows when they’re just cowards dodging their duty.  They get so they can’t take any pleasure except in going on the spree and if they only go on once in a month or two “—­this was a hit at Hobbs—­“they’re the worse for it.  Why, look here, Mr. Hobbs, if I hadn’t been here you’d have gone to-night and brought home beer and comforted yourselves getting fuddled.  That’s so, you know, and it wouldn’t be right.  It’s just that sort of thing “—­she added softly—­“that stops us seeing how it is the little ones die when they shouldn’t.  If everybody would knock off drinking for ten years, everybody, we’d have everything straightened out by then and nobody would ever want to go on the spree again.”

She stood with her back to the moonlight, fingering the post of the door.  Mr. Hobbs fumbled still with the door-knob and looked every way but at her.  She waited for an answer, but he did not speak.

“Come,” she continued, after a pause.  “Can’t you give it up?  I know it’s a lot to do when one’s used to it.  But you’ll feel better in the end and your wife will be better right away and the children, and it won’t be blacklegging on those who’re trying to make things better.  No matter how poor he is if a man’s sober he’s a man, while if he drinks, no matter if he’s got millions, he’s a brute.”

“You never drink anything, Miss Lawton, do you?” asked Mr. Hobbs, swinging the door.

“I never touched it in my life,” said Nellie.

“Do you really think you’re better for it?”

“I think it has kept me straight,” said Nellie, earnestly.  “I wouldn’t touch a drop to save my life.  Some people call us who don’t drink fools just because a few humbugs make temperance a piece of cant.  I think those who get drunk are fools or who drink when there’s a prospect of themselves or those they drink with getting drunk.  Drink makes a man an empty braggart or a contented fool.  It makes him heartless not only to others but to himself.”