CHAPTER XV.
"I have resolved to dissolve partnership with Charles," said Augustine Romaine to his wife, the next morning after his son's return from the Champaign supper at John Anderson's.
"Oh! no you are not in earnest, are you?
You seem suddenly to have lost all patience with Charlie." "Yes I have, and I have made up my mind that I am not going to let him hang like a millstone on our business.

No, if he will go down, I am determined he shall not drag me down with him.

See what a hurt it would be to us, to have it said, 'Don't trust your case with the Romaine's for the Junior member of that firm is a confirmed drunkard.'" "Well, Augustine you ought to know best, but it seems like casting him off, to dissolve partnership with him." "I can't help it, if he persists in his downward course he must take the consequences.

Charles has had every advantage; when other young lawyers have had to battle year after year with obscurity and poverty, he entered into a business that was already established and flourishing.
What other men were struggling for, he found ready made to his hand, and if he chooses to throw away every advantage and make a complete wreck of himself, I can't help it." "Oh! it does seem so dreadful, I wonder what will become of my poor boy ?" "Now, mother I want you to look at this thing in the light of reason and common sense.

I am not turning Charles out of the house.