"A wheelbarrow!" Phyllis was saying tragically, as she took her cup from the waitress, who was listening interestedly, if furtively.
"A wheelbarrow," assented Miss Addison, a pretty, white-haired spinster. She, too, took a cup.
Phyllis cast up her eyes in horror and, incidentally, saw Joy.
"Come in," she said resignedly. "I'm just hearing how Philip disported himself at his 'lunchun.'"
"I didn't mean to distress you, but I really thought you should know, Mrs. Harrington," pursued the visitor plaintively.
"I'm eternally grateful," murmured Phyllis, beginning, as usual, to be overcome with the funny side of the situation. "But—oh, Joy, what do you think of my sinful offspring? Miss Addison says Philip spent the luncheon hour relating to her how his father went to the saloon in the village, had two glasses of beer, was entirely overcome, and had to be brought home in—in—" by this time Phyllis was laughing uncontrollably—"in a wheelbarrow!"
Joy, too, was aghast for a moment, then the situation became too much for her, and she also began to laugh.
"Good gracious!" she said.
"And that isn't all!" Phyllis went on hysterically. "After Allan's friends, or the policeman, or whoever it was, tipped him off the wheelbarrow onto the front porch (imagine Allan in a wheelbarrow! It would take two for the length of him!), he staggered in, and would have beaten me, but that my noble son flung himself between! Then he was overcome with remorse—wasn't he, Miss Addison?—and signed the pledge."
"Good gracious!" said Joy, inadequately, again.