“Anyhow I’ve had a sleep,” said the philosopher in him.

The door opened.  Machin appeared, defying her mistress’s orders.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but a Mr. Morfey is on the telephone and asks whether it would be convenient for you to see him to-night.  He says it’s urgent.”  Mr. Prohack braced himself, but where his stomach had been there was a void.

V

“Had an accident to your eye-glass?” asked Mr. Prohack, shaking hands with Oswald Morfey, when the latter entered, by appointment, Mr. Prohack’s breakfast-room after dinner.  Miss Warburton having gone home, Mr. Prohack had determined to employ her official room for formal interviews.  With her woman’s touch she had given it an air of business which pleasantly reminded him of the Treasury.

Ozzie was not wearing an eye-glass, and the absence of the broad black ribbon that usually ran like a cable-connection between his eye and his supra-umbilical region produced the disturbing illusion that he had forgotten an essential article of attire.

“Yes,” Ozzie replied, opening his eyes with that mien of surprise that was his response to all questions, even the simplest.  “Miss Sissie has cracked it.”

“I’m very sorry my daughter should be so clumsy.”

“It was not exactly clumsiness.  I offered her the eye-glass to do what she pleased with, and she pleased to break it.”

“Surely an impertinence?”

“No.  A favour.  Miss Sissie did not care for my eye-glass.”

“You must be considerably incommoded.”

“No.  The purpose of my eye-glass was decorative, not optical.”  Ozzie smiled agreeably, though nervously.

Mr. Prohack was conscious of a certain surprising sympathy for this chubby simpering young man with the peculiar vocation, whom but lately he had scorned and whom on one occasion he had described as a perfect ass.

“Well, shall we sit down?” suggested the elder, whom the younger’s nervousness had put into an excellent state of easy confidence.

“The fact is,” said Ozzie, obeying, “the fact is that I’ve come to see you about Sissie.  I’m very anxious to marry her, Mr. Prohack.”

“Indeed!  Then you must excuse this old velvet coat.  If I’d had notice of the solemnity of your visit, my dear Morfey, I’d have met you in a dinner jacket.  May I just put one question?  Have you kissed Sissie already?”

“I—­er—­have.”

“By force or by mutual agreement?”

“Neither.”

“She made no protest?”

“No.”

“The reverse rather?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you come here to me?”

“To get your consent.”

“I suppose you arranged with Sissie that you should come here?”

“Yes, I did.  We thought it would be best if I came alone.”

“Well, all I can say is that you’re a very old-fashioned pair.  I’m afraid that you must have forgotten to alter your date calendar when the twentieth century started.  Let me assure you that this is not by any means the nineteenth.  I admit that I only altered my own date calendar this afternoon, and even then only as the result of an unusual dream.”