“Well, yes, of course.  But I mean an inordinate desire for drink, a craving that makes indulgence perilous?”

“Yes; that is just what I do believe.”

If that be so, the case is a serious one.  In taking wine with him a short time ago I noticed a certain enjoyable eagerness as he held the glass to his lips not often observed in our young men.”

“You drank with him?” queried the doctor.

“Yes.  He and Blanche Birtwell have recently become engaged, and I took some wine with them in compliment.”

The doctor, instead of replying, became silent and thoughtful, and Mr. Elliott moved away among the crowd of guests.

“I am really sorry for Mrs. Whitford,” said a lady with whom he soon became engaged in conversation.

“Why so?” asked the clergyman, betraying surprise.

“What’s the matter?  No family trouble, I hope?”

“Very serious trouble I should call it were it my own,” returned the lady.

“I am pained to hear you speak so.  What has occurred?”

“Haven’t you noticed her son to-night?  There!  That was his laugh.  He’s been drinking too much.  I saw his mother looking at him a little while ago with eyes so full of sorrow and suffering that it made my heart ache.”

“Oh, I hope it’s nothing,” replied Mr. Elliott.  “Young men will become a little gay on these occasions; we must expect that.  All of them don’t bear wine alike.  It’s mortifying to Mrs. Whitford, of course, but she’s a stately woman, you know, and sensitive about proprieties.”

Mr. Elliott did not wait for the lady’s answer, but turned to address another person who came forward at the moment to speak to him.

“Sensitive about proprieties,” said the lady to herself, with some feeling, as she stood looking down the room to where Ellis Whitford in a group of young men and women was giving vent to his exuberant spirits more noisily than befitted the place and occasion.  “Mr. Elliott calls things by dainty names.”

“I call that disgraceful,” remarked an elderly lady, in a severe tone, as if replying to the other’s thought.

“Young men will become a little gay on these occasions,” said the person to whom she had spoken, with some irony in her tone.  “So Mr. Elliott says.”

“Mr. Elliott!” There was a tone of bitterness and rejection in the speaker’s voice.  “Mr. Elliott had better give our young men a safer example than he does.  A little gay!  A little drunk would be nearer the truth.”

“Oh dear! such a vulgar word!  We don’t use it in good society, you know.  It belongs to taverns and drinking-saloons—­to coarse, common people.  You must say ‘a little excited,’ ‘a little gay,’ but not drunk.  That’s dreadful!”

“Drunk!” said the other, with emphasis, but speaking low and for the ear only of the lady with whom she was talking.  “We understand a great deal better the quality of a thing when we call it by its right name.  If a young man drinks wine or brandy until he becomes intoxicated, as Whitford has done to-night, and we say he is drunk instead of exhilarated or a little gay, we do something toward making his conduct odious.  We do not excuse, but condemn.  We make it disgraceful instead of palliating the offence.”