“Well, perhaps you’re right, sir.  She’d have copped me anyway.”

“I congratulate you, Carthew.  You’ve been copped by the best parlourmaid in London.”

“Thank you, sir.  I think I’ll be getting along, sir.”

“Have you told Mrs. Prohack?”

“I thought I’d best leave that to Machin, sir.”

Mr. Prohack waved a hand, thoughtful.  He heard Carthew leave.  He heard Dr. Veiga arrive, and then he heard Dr. Veiga leaving, and rushed to the dining-room door.

“Veiga!  A moment.  Come in.  Everything all right?”

“Of course.  Absolutely normal.  But you know what these young husbands are.  I can’t stop unless you’re really ill, my friend.”

“I’m worse than really ill,” said Mr. Prohack, shutting the door.  “I’m really bored.  I’m surrounded by the most interesting phenomena and I’m really bored.  I’ve taken to heart all your advice and I’m really bored.  So there!”

The agreeable, untidy, unprofessional Portuguese quack twinkled at him, and then said in his thick, southern, highly un-English voice:  “The remedy may be worse than the disease.  You are bored because you have no worries, my friend.  I will give you advice.  Go back to your Treasury.”

“I cannot,” said Mr. Prohack.  “I’ve resigned.  I found out that my friend Hunter was expecting promotion in my place.”

“Ah, well!” replied Dr. Veiga with strange sardonic indifference.  “If you will sacrifice yourself to your friends you must take the consequences like a man.  I will talk to you some other time, when I’ve got nothing better to do.  I am very busy, telling people what they already know.”  And he went.

A minute later Charlie arrived in a car suitable to his grandeur.

“Look here, dad,” said Charlie in a hurry.  “If you’re game for a day out I particularly want to show you something.  And incidentally you’ll see some driving, believe me!”

“My will is made!  I am game,” answered Mr. Prohack, delighted at the prospect of any diversion, however perilous.

II

When Charlie drew up at the Royal Pier, Southampton (having reached there in rather less time than the train journey and a taxi at each end would have required), he silently handed over the wheel to the chauffeur, and led his mystified but unenquiring father down the steps on the west side of the pier.  A man in a blue suit with a peaked cap and a white cover on the cap was standing at the foot of the steps, just above the water and above a motor-launch containing two other men in blue jerseys with the name “Northwind” on their breasts and on their foreheads.  A blue ensign was flying at the stem of the launch.

“How d’ye do, Snow?” Charlie greeted the first man, who raised his cap.