e fell flat at her
mother's feet. Her parents, well-to-do shopkeepers, who had
forgiven her several times before, turned her out. She became one
man's mistress and then another's. She began early, and was
scarcely 19 now. She would leave off the drink for a time and try
to be respectable. She loved her father and mother, but she could
not help drinking at times. She spoke cheerfully and laughingly
about it all; she was young, strong, good natured, and careless.
We went to sleep for a little while and then wandered in the
early morning down toward the cemetery, when she tried to tidy
her hair, asking me how I had enjoyed myself and not waiting for
an answer. She was thirsty, she said, and when the public houses
opened we went and had a drink. It was the first time I had seen
her drink alcohol,--at the boarding house she had always been the
picture of health and sweetness,--and I saw a change come over
her at once, so that I understood all that she had told me. The
sleepless night may have made it worse, but the look that came
into her eyes, and the looseness of the fibres not only of her
tell-tale wet mouth, but of every muscle of her face was
startling and piteous to see. She saw my look and laughed, but
her laugh was equally piteous to hear, and when she spoke again
her voice had changed too, and was equally piteous. She asked for
another. 'No, don't,' I begged, for the pretty girl I had
flattered myself I had passed a summer's night with that most
young men would envy, showed signs of changing, like some siren,
into a flabby, blear-eyed boozer. That hurt my vanity.

"I met her another night and she took, me to her lodgings, and I
slept with her all night. I no longer tried to stop her drinking,
but drank with her. I ceased to treat her with courtesy and
gallantry; she noticed it, but only drank the more, drank till
she became dirty in her ways, till her good looks vanished. I
left her, too drunk to stand, as some friend, a woman, called on
her.

"She came to see me once more, like her old self, so well dressed
and well behaved, and chatted so cheerfully to my landlady that
the latter afterward congratulated me on having such a friend.
Dolly carried a parcel of underclothing she had made, with a few
toys, for the children of a poor man in the suburbs, and I
accompani