Well, you know how it is to see an Enemy on the run, and although I
regret to refer to my dear mother as an Enemy, still at that moment she
was such and no less. And she was beating it. It was the referance to
my youth that had aroused me, and I was like a wounded lion. Besides, I
knew well enough that if they refused to see that I was practicaly grown
up, if not entirely, I would get a lot of Sis's clothes, fixed up with
new ribbons. Faded old things! I'd had them for years.

Better to be considered a bad woman than an unformed child.

"However, mother," I finished, "if it is any comfort to you, I did not
buy that Flask. And I am not a confirmed alcoholic. By no means."

"This settles it," she said, in a melancoly tone. "When I think of the
comfort Leila has been to me, and the anxiety you have caused, I wonder
where you get your--your DEVILTRY from. I am posatively faint."

I was alarmed, for she did look queer, with her face all white around
the Rouge. So I reached for the Flask.

"I'll give you a swig of this," I said. "It will pull you around in no
time."

But she held me off feircely.

"Never!" she said. "Never again. I shall emty the wine cellar. There
will be nothing to drink in this house from now on. I do not know what
we are coming to."

She walked into the bathroom, and I heard her emptying the Flask down