"Only the special angel that watches over bad little boys knows," said his mother with conviction. "And it won't tell. I know by experience that I'll never get it out of Philip. He'll say, sweetly, 'Oh, I just _fought_ it, Muvver!' in as infantile a voice as possible." They all three sat and pondered. "It sounds just like a tract," said Joy at last. "Exactly like a tract," assented Phyllis. "Do you suppose--in Sunday-school----" "I'm his Sunday-school teacher," Miss Addison reminded her indignantly. "That settles _that!_" "Well, have some more tea, anyway, now the worst is over," said her hostess hospitably.... "A _wheel_barrow!" They continued to sit over their teacups and meditate. Suddenly Phyllis rose swiftly and made a spring for the bookcase, scattering sponge-cake as she went. "I have it, I believe!" she exclaimed. "Well, who'd think--Viola read this to Philip when he was getting over the scarlatina last winter. There wasn't another child's book in the house that he didn't know by heart, and we couldn't borrow on account of the infection. I took it away from them, but the mischief was done. But he's never spoken of it or seemed to remember it from that day to this, and I'd forgotten it, too." She held up a small, dingy book and opened it to the title-page. "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. "We are his environment," Phyllis reminded him. "As far as I know we are rather nice people."