sing than dining here, and it saves
the servants." Yet the woman had recently begun to assert that the
servants hadn't enough to do!

"Ah!" said Mr. Prohack, startled. "And who are the guests?"

"Oh! Nobody! Only us and Charlie, of course, and Oswald Morfey, and
perhaps Lady Massulam. I've told Charlie to do the ordering."

"I should have thought one meal per diem at the Grand Babylon would have
been sufficient."

"But this is in the _restaurant_, don't I tell you? Oh, dear! That's
three times I've tried to do my hair. It's always the same when I want
it nice. Now do get along, Arthur!"

"Strange!" said he with a sardonic blitheness. "Strange how it's always
my fault when your hair goes wrong!" And to himself he said: "All right!
All right! I just shan't inform you about that quarter of a million.
You've no leisure for details to-night, my girl."

And he went into the boudoir.

His blissful serenity was too well established to be overthrown by
anything short of a catastrophe. Nevertheless it did quiver slightly
under the shock of Eve's new tactics in life. This was the woman who, on
only the previous night, had been inveighing against the ostentation of
her son's career at the Grand Babylon. Now she seemed determined to
rival him in showiness, to be the partner of his alleged vulgarity. That
the immature Sissie should suddenly drop the ideals of the new poor for
the ideals of the new rich was excusable. But Eve! But that modest
embodiment of shy and quiet commonsense! She, who once had scorned the
world of _The Daily Picture_, was more and more disclosing a desire for
that world. And where now were her doubts about the righteousness of
Charlie's glittering deeds? And where was the ancient sagacity which
surely should have prevented her from being deceived by the
superficialities of an Oswald Morfey? Was she blindly helping to prepare
a disaster for her blind daughter? Was the explanation that she had
tasted of the fruit? The horrid thought crossed Mr. Prohack's mind: _All
women are alike._ He flung it out of his loyal mind, trying to
substitute: All women except Eve are alike. But it came back in its
original form.... Not that he cared, really. If Eve had transformed
herself into a Cleopatra his ridiculous passion for her would have
suffered no modification.

Lying around the boudoir were various rectangular parcels, addressed in
flowing calligraphy to himself: the first harvest-loads of his busy
morning. The