"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. That was the final straw. Why couldn't he have made it several quarts of brandy, or even knockout drops?"
"I hope you don't want an innocent child of that age to know about knockout drops!" said Clarence Rutherford, the ubiquitous.
"Well, there's something wrong with his environment," said Allan.