of the boot-lacing, fell about an inch to the left
thereof. "And I've tried this suit on four times! All the bally tailors
in London seem to think you've got nothing else to do but call and try
on and try on and try on. Never seems to occur to them that they don't
know their business. It's as bad as staff work. However, if this fellow
thinks I'm going to stick these trousers he'll have the surprise of his
life to-morrow morning." The youth spoke in a tone of earnest disgust.

"My boy," said Mr. Prohack, "you have my most serious sympathy. Your
life must be terribly complicated by this search for perfection."

"Yes, that's all very well," said Charlie.

"Where's Sissie?"

"Hanged if I know!"

"I heard her playing the piano not five minutes since."

"So did I."

Machin, the house-parlourmaid, then intervened:

"Miss Sissie had a telephone call, and she's gone out, sir."

"Where to?"

"She didn't say, sir. She only said she wouldn't be in for dinner, sir.
I made sure she'd told you herself, sir."

The two men, by means of their eyes, transmitted to each other a
unanimous judgment upon the whole female sex, and sat down to dine alone
in the stricken house. The dinner was extremely frugal, this being the
opening day of Mrs. Prohack's new era of intensive economy, but the
obvious pleasure of Machin in serving only men brightened up somewhat
its brief course. Charlie was taciturn and curt, though not impolite.
Mr. Prohack, whose private high spirits not even the amazing and
inexcusable absence of his daughter could impair, pretended to a decent
woe, and chatted as he might have done to a fellow-clubman on a wet
Sunday night at the Club.

At the end of the meal Charlie produced the enormous widow's cruse which
he called his cigarette-case and offered his father a cigarette.

"Doing anything to-night?" asked Mr. Prohack, puffing.

"No," answered desperately Charlie, puffing.

"Ring the bell, will you?"

While Charlie went to the mantelpiece Mr. Prohack secreted an apple for
his starving wife.

"Machin," said he to the incoming house-parlourmaid, "see if you can
find some port."

Charlie raised his fatigued eyebrows.

"Yes, sir," said the house-parlourmaid, vivaciously, and whisked away
her skirts, which seemed to remark:

"You're quite right to have port. I feel very sorry for you two
attractive gentlemen taking a poor dinner all alone."

Charlie drank his port in silence and Mr. Prohack watched him.