t _why_?"

And then for the first time his companion spoke:

"Are you a total abstainer?"

"What's them?"

Both boys stopped to laugh ere they made answer.

"Why people who think it wicked to 'touch, taste or handle,' you know.
Say, Pliny, did you know there's quite an excitement on the subject up
our way? Old Mousey is round trying to get all the folks to promise not
to sell Joe any more brandy."

"Stuff and nonsense!" oracularly pronounced Pliny, quoting the
unanswerable argument of his elders.

"Fact. And folks say Joe has been drunk more times in a week since than
he ever was before."

"Of course, that's the way it always works, trying to _make_ folks do
what they won't do. Joe ought to be hung, though. What does a fellow
want to be a fool for and go and get drunk? But say, Todie, why don't
you drink a drop?"

"I ain't a going to," was Tode's only answer.

The two friends looked at each other curiously.

"You're green," said Pliny, at last.

"Yes," said Tode, promptly, "maybe; so's the moon."

Whereat the two laughed and strolled away.

"Isn't he a queer chap?" they said to each other as they went out into
the snow.

Meantime Tode looked after them for a moment before he began briskly to
gather up the remains of the feast. Tode had some new ideas. He had
formerly lived a stratum below the temperance movement; it had scarce
troubled his father's cellar; so he had to-day discovered that there
were others besides his mother who prayed their sons not to drink a drop
of rum. Also that a young man who went and got drunk was considered a
fool by elegant young men, such as he had just been serving. Also, and
sharpest, these two evidently thought him "green." If they had said a
thief or scamp Tode would have laughed, but "green!" that touched.

"I'll show them a thing or to, maybe," he said, defiantly, as he seized
a pile of plates and vanished.

Now our three babies, nurtured severally in the lace-canopied crib, in
the plump-cushioned rocking-chair, in the reeking cellar corner, had
come together from their several "spheres" and held their first
conversation. Other hungry people came for their dinner and Tode served
them, and was very attentive to their wants and their words. A busy life
the boy led during these days--a brisk, bustling life, which kept him in
a state of perpetual delight. There was something in his nature which
answered to all this rush and systematic confusion of business, and
rejoic