There wasn't another child's book in the house that he
didn't know by heart, and we couldn't borrow on account of the
infection. I took it away from them, but the mischief was done. But
he's never spoken of it or seemed to remember it from that day to
this, and I'd forgotten it, too."
She held up a small, dingy book and opened it to the title-page.
"The Drunkard's Child; or, Little Robert and His Father," it said in
lettering of the eighteen-forties.
It was unmistakably the groundwork of Philip's romance. It had a
woodcut frontispiece of Little Robert in a roundabout and baggy
trousers, inadequately embracing his cowering mother's hoopskirt,
while his father, the Drunkard in question, staggered remorsefully
back. It was all there, even to the wheelbarrow--also inadequate.
"It didn't hurt Philip's great-grandfather," said his mother. "I
don't see why it should have affected Philip as it did. Different
times, different manners, I suppose.... The Drunkard's Child!"
"Where _is_ he?" Joy thought to ask.
"Innocently playing with his little sister in the nursery," said
Phyllis. "Doubtless teaching her that she is a Drunkard's Daughter.
I have him still to deal with.... A wheelbarrow! I wonder what Allan
_will_ say?"
CHAPTER NINE
THE TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE
"It wasn't so much my behavior after I was wheeled home," said
Philip's father mournfully, "as it was my getting so outrageously
drunk on two glasses of beer.
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