In justice to Philip, the critics—those critics that count—prophesied a big future for him. He was still a very young man.
He was considerably relieved that his uncle’s book would be by “Robert Burns,” and not by “Barrimore.” Had it been his father’s brother instead of his mother’s Philip would have regarded the publication of this volume of verse as nothing short of a catastrophe.
Philip did not want so inferior a production to be put down to him.
But Philip was fond of his uncle, and he had made big efforts to appear pleased that the book was coming out. Nevertheless, his real views did leak out in spite of him. In a fit of penitence for “hurting the poor old chap’s feelings” Philip consented to leave work and dine at Hawk’s Nest as requested.
Philip often had fits of penitence regarding his treatment of both his uncle and his mother; nevertheless he had but the vaguest idea how much he sometimes hurt them both.
Of one thing Philip had an idea that had no vagueness at all about it, and that was Colonel Lane’s opinion about it all.
Colonel Lane often regarded Philip with a cold, disapproving eye. Once he had said, after Philip had been putting his mother and his uncle right on several points in succession, “A bit of army discipline would do you good, young man.”
Davis, the ex-soldier, who acted as servant to Philip, had also his ideas about his domineering, dictatorial (albeit kind) master, and had on one occasion confided to the saucepan he was scouring that it would improve Mr. Barrimore to be “kicked round the square” a bit.
Philip was not altogether to blame. His mother had always treated him as a demi-god from his infancy. Also she had made the great mistake of keeping him at home under a tutor when he ought to have been at a public school—an omission with which Philip in these days, did not fail to reproach his mother!
“The boy hasn’t been thrashed, that’s what’s the matter with him,” Uncle Robert would often observe. “‘Spare the rod and spoil the child!’ Why I don’t think Philip ever so much as had a fight with another boy!”