Frank Oldfield | Page 3

own, the drink was ever before
their eyes, the daily sin and misery that it caused they knew by sharp
experience--time after time 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