"Got fighting drunk," replied the Manager. "He'd been warned before."
After that Mr. Pigott set his face like a flint.
"It's now or never," he admitted to Mr. Trupp, and added reluctantly, "There may be something in your Big Stick sometimes, after all."
CHAPTER XLVII
ALF TRIES TO HELP
Ernie was now in a bad way materially.
He became seedy and slipshod, with hollow eyes, and clothes that hung loosely upon his diminishing frame.
Alf resented his presence and appearance as a personal injury.
"Does it to spite me, it's my belief," he told his mother furiously. "Always at the Star corner lookin like a scare-crow and askin for pity. A fair disgrace on the family. Of course all the folks want to know why I don't help him. What's the good of helping him? He's the sort the more you help the less he'll help himself. Help him downhill, as Reverend Spink says."
The thing became a scandal locally, and Anne Caspar shared something of the feeling of her younger son.