could Dolly be thinking of? Her mother was
out of the question.

"I don't make out what you are at, Dolly," she said. "Such things do
not happen in our class of society."

"Yes, they do. They happen in every class. And the highest ought to set
an example to the lowest."

"No use if they did. Anyhow, Dolly, it is nothing you and I can meddle
with."

"I think we ought not to have wine on our tables."

"Mercy! Everybody does that."

"It is offering temptation."

"To whom? Our friends are not that sort of people."

"How do you know but they may be? How can you tell but the taste or the
tendency may be where you least think of it?"

"You don't mean that Mr. St. Leger has anything of that sort?" said
Christina, facing round upon her.

"No more than other people, so far as I know. I am speaking in general,
Christina. The thing is in the world; and we, I do think, we whose
example would influence people,--I suppose everybody's example
influences somebody else--I think we ought to do what we can."

"And not have wine on our dinner-tables!"

"Would that be so very dreadful?"

"It would be very inconvenient, I can tell you, and very disagreeable.
Fancy! no wine on the table. No one could understand it. And how our
dinner-tables would look, Dolly, with the wine-glasses and the
decanters taken off! And then, what would people talk about? Wine is
such a help in getting through with a dinner-party. People who do not
know anything else, and cannot talk of anything else, can taste wine;
and have plenty to say about its colour, and its _bouquet_, and its
age, and its growth, and its manufacture, and where it can be got
genuine, and how it can be adulterated. And so one gets through with
the dinner quite comfortably."

"I should not want to see people who knew no more than that," said
Dolly.

"Oh, but you must."

"Why?"

"And it does not do to be unfashionable."

"Why, Christina! Do you recollect what is said in the epistle of
John--'The world knoweth us not'? I do not see how a Christian _can_ be
fashionable. To be fashionable, one must follow the ways of the world."

"Well, we must follow some of them," cried Christina, flaring up, "or
people will not have anything to do with you."

"That's what Christ said,--'Because ye are not of the world, ...
therefore the world hateth you.'"

"Do you like to have people hate you?"

"No; but rather that than have Jesus say I do not belong to Him."

"Dolly," said Chris