"No, Frank, I cannot accept your offer; I am a temperance man and a
prohibitionist, and I would rather have my hands clean than to have them
foul."

"You are a greater milksop than I gave you credit for. Here you are
hunting work, and find door after door closed against you, not because
you are not but because you are colored, and here am I offering you easy
employment and good wages and you refuse them."

"Frank," said Mr. Thomas, "I am a poor man, but I would rather rise up
early, and sit up late and eat the bread of carelessness, than to roll
in wealth by keeping a liquor saloon, and I am determined that no
drunkard shall ever charge me with having helped drag him down to
misery, shame and death. No drunkard's wife shall ever lay the wreck of
her home at my door."

"My business," said Frank Miller, "is a legitimate one; there is money
in it, and I am after that. If people will drink too much and make fools
of themselves I can't help it; it is none of my business, and if I don't
sell to them other people will. I don't think much of a man who does not
know how to govern himself, but it is no use arguing with you when you
are once set in your ways; good morning."




Chapter XII


It was a gala day in Tennis Court. Annette had passed a highly