After that, he was much better and managed, without collapsing, to get through the ghastly nightmare of the Doodle-Doo Quest on the Pirate Ship. But there were moments when Molly and I were compelled to hold him down in his seat.
"Disgraceful!" I heard someone growl behind us.
"Absurd, bringing a doddering old chap of that age!" whispered another.
In spite of the low, angry murmurs of the audience in our immediate vicinity, we contrived, however, to sit through the whole play without causing a riot, and when we eventually left the theatre, I explained to Gran'pa exactly what I thought of him.
"I couldn't—help it!" he said listlessly, as if every drop of his energy had gone.
"But it's so pitifully weak and selfish, behaving as you did," I remonstrated. "Think how it annoyed the other members of the audience."
He tried to answer but could not.
Then his legs gave way, and he suddenly sat down on the pavement and began crying hysterically.
I called a taxi, gathered him up, and hustled him into it, where he sat twitching in the corner like a man with Saint Vitus' dance.
Although I don't pretend to understand very much about medical science, I do know that thyroid gland secretion has a remarkably stimulating effect on the mental faculties. With too little of it, one is dull and lifeless; with too much of it, one is active and highly strung. Could it be that Alfred's glands were too vigorous, and that what was normally good for monkey was abnormally bad for man? It was a very discomfiting thought, and I grew so alarmed at Gran'pa's condition that I decided to get him a bromide draught. It would, at any rate, afford temporary relief.