To them enters a youth, who is hailed
with "How is Dickey's neuralgia?"
The newcomer grins and answers: "Better, I guess. He's had six drinks,
and is now asleep upstairs on Eleanore's couch. He'll be all right
when he wakes up."
They laugh, but quite sympathetically, and the subject is dismissed.
Now, there is a noteworthy point in this trifling episode, though it
may appear a trifle obscure at first. There is, to be sure, nothing
especially interesting or edifying in the fact of a young man's
drinking himself into insensibility to dull a faceache; the thing has
been known before. Neither is it an unheard-of occurrence for a
friendly and charitably inclined woman to grant him harbour room
till he has slept it off. The only striking point about this is that
it is taken so entirely as a matter of course by the Villagers. It no
more astonishes them that Eleanore should give up her couch to a male
acquaintance for an indefinite number of night hours, than that she
should give him a cup of tea. It is entirely the proper, kindly thing
to do; if Eleanore had not done it, she would not be a Villager, and
the Village would have none of her.
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