Frank Oldfield | Page 3

had they been urged to take the drink by those very parents whose substance, whose strength, whose peace had all withered down to the very ground under its fatal poison. How hard had been the struggle to resist! but now, if they became pledged abstainers, they would have something more to say which could give additional strength to their refusal.
The speaker stood pen in hand when he had closed his address.
"Come--which of you young people will sign?"
Samuel made his way to the table.
"I don't mind if I do," he said; and then turning to Betty, when he had written his name, "come, Betty," he cried, "you'll sign too--come, stick to the pen."
"Well, I might do worse, I reckon," said Betty, and she also signed. A few more followed, and shortly afterwards the meeting broke up.
But a storm was now brewing, which the brother and sister had not calculated for. Johnson and three or four kindred spirits were sitting round a neighbour's fire smoking and drinking while the meeting was going on. A short time after it had closed, a man thrust open the door of the house where Johnson was sitting, and peeping round, said with a grin,--
"I say, Tommy Jacky," (the nickname by which Johnson was familiarly known), "your Sammul and Betty have just been signing Teetottal Pledge."
"Eh! what do you say?" exclaimed Johnson in a furious tone, and springing to his feet; "signed the pledge! I'll see about that;" and hurrying out of the house, he half ran half staggered to his own miserable dwelling. He was tolerably sobered when he got there. Samuel was sitting by the fire near his mother, who was frying some bacon for supper. Betty had just thrown aside on to the couch the handkerchief which she had used instead of a bonnet, and was preparing to help her mother. Johnson sat down in the old rickety rocking-chair at the opposite side of the fire to Samuel, and stooping down, unbuckled his clogs, which he kicked off savagely; then he looked up at his son, and said in a voice of suppressed passion,--
"So, my lad, you've been and signed teetottal."
"Yes, I have," was the reply.
"And you've signed too," he cried in a louder voice, turning fiercely upon Betty.
"Ay, fayther, I have," said Betty, quietly.
"Well, now," said Johnson, clenching his teeth, "you just mind me, I'll have nothing of the sort in my house. I hate your nasty, mean, sneaking teetottallers--we'll have none of that sort here. D'ye hear?" he shouted.
Neither Samuel nor Betty spoke.
"Hush, hush, Tom," broke in his wife; "you mustn't scold the childer so. I'm no fonder nor you of the teetottallers, but childer will not be driven. Come, Sammul--come, Betty, you mustn't be obstinate; you know fayther means what he says."
"Ay that I do," said her husband. "And now, you listen: I'd sooner see you both in your graves, nor have you sticking up your pledge cards about the house, and turning up the whites of your eyes at your own fayther and mother, as if we were not good enough for the likes of you. Me and mine have ever loved our pipe and our pot, the whole brood of us, and we ne'er said `no' to a chap when he asked for a drop of drink--it shall never be said of me or mine, `They give 'em nothing in yon house but tea and cold water!'"
"Ay, ay; you're light, Thomas," said his wife; "I'm not for seeing our bairns beginning of such newfangled ways. Come, childer, just clap the foolish bits of papper behind the fire, and sit ye down to your supper."
"Mother," said Betty, in a sad but decided voice, "we have seen enough in this house to make us rue that ever a drop of the drink crossed our door-step. We've toiled hard early and late for you and fayther, but the drink has taken it all. You may scold us if you will, but Sammul and I must keep our pledge, and keep it gradely too."
"And I say," cried her father, striking his hand violently on the table, "I'll make you both break afore ye're a day older; ye've pleased yourselves long enough, but ye shall please me now. I never said nothing afore, though mother nor me didn't like to see ye scowling at the drink as if it were poison; a drop now and then would have done ye no harm, but ye were like to please yourselves--but it's different now. We'll have none of your pledges here, ye may make yourselves sure of that."
"You can't help yourself fayther," said Samuel doggedly: "pledged we are, and pledged we're bound to be, but--"
Before he could say more, Johnson had snatched up one of his heavy clogs and had hurled it at the head of