“You are so amusing, Mr. Prohack.”

“I may be amusing, but I am not susceptible to the flattery of giggling.  Endeavour not to treat serious subjects lightly.”

“I don’t see any boots.”

“Neither do I. You will telephone to the bootmaker’s, and to my tailor’s; also to Sir Paul Spinner and Messrs. Smathe and Smathe.  But before that I will just dictate a few more letters.”

“Certainly.”

When he had finished dictating, Mr. Prohack said: 

“I shall now get up.  Go downstairs and ask Machin—­that’s the parlourmaid—­to show you the breakfast-room.  The breakfast-room is behind the dining-room, and is so called because it is never employed for breakfast.  It exists in all truly London houses, and is perfectly useless in all of them except those occupied by dentists, who use it for their beneficent labours in taking things from, or adding things to, the bodies of their patients.  The breakfast-room in this house will be the secretary’s room—­your room if you continue to give me satisfaction.  Remove that typewriting machine from here, and arrange your room according to your desire....  And I say, Miss Warburton.”

“Yes, Mr. Prohack,” eagerly responded the secretary, pausing at the door.

“Yesterday I gave you a brief outline of your duties.  But I omitted one exceedingly important item—­almost as important as not falling in love with my son.  You will have to keep on good terms with Machin.  Machin is indispensable and irreplaceable.  I could get forty absolutely loyal secretaries while my wife was unsuccessfully searching for another Machin.”

“I have an infallible way with parlourmaids,” said Miss Warburton.

“What is that?”

“I listen to their grievances and to their love-affairs.”

Mr. Prohack, though fatigued, felt himself to be inordinately well, and he divined that this felicity was due to the exercise of dancing on the previous night, following upon the Turkish bath.  He had not felt so well for many years.  He laughed to himself at intervals as he performed his toilette, and knew not quite why.  His secretary was just like a new toy to him, offering many of the advantages of official life and routine without any of the drawbacks.  At half past eleven he descended, wearing one or two of the more discreet of his new possessions, and with the sensation of having already transacted a good day’s work, into the breakfast-room and found Miss Warburton and Machin in converse.  Machin feverishly poked the freshly-lit fire and then, pretending to have urgent business elsewhere, left the room.

“Here are some particulars of a house in Manchester Square,” said Mr. Prohack.  “Please read them.”

Miss Warburton complied.

“It seems really very nice,” said she.  “Very nice indeed.”

“Does it?  Now listen to me.  That house is apparently the most practical and the most beautiful house in London.  Judging from the description, it deserves to be put under a glass-case in a museum and labelled ’the ideal house.’  There is no fault to be found with that house, and I should probably take it at once but for one point.  I don’t want it.  I do not want it.  Do I make myself clear?  I have no use for it whatever.”