Soon afterwards he went below to talk to the chit, and the skipper took charge of Mr. Prohack and displayed to him the engine-room, the officers’ quarters, the forecastle, the galley, and all manner of arcana that Charlie had grandiosely neglected.

“It’s a world!” said Mr. Prohack, but the skipper did not quite comprehend the remark.

“Well,” said Charlie, returning.  “We’ll have some tea and then we must be off again.  I have to be in town to-night.  Have you seen everything?  What’s the verdict?  Some ship, eh?”

“Some ship,” agreed Mr. Prohack.  “But the most shockingly uneconomic thing I’ve ever met with in all my life.  How often do you use the yacht?”

“Well, I haven’t been able to use her yet.  She’s been lying here waiting for me for nearly a month.  I hope to get a few days off soon.”

“I understand there’s a crew of thirty odd, all able-bodied and knowing their job, I suppose.  And all waiting for a month to give you and me a lunch and a tea.  Seven hundred pounds in wages alone for lunch and a tea for two, without counting the food and the washing!”

“And why not, dad?” Charlie retorted calmly.  “I’ve got to spend a bit of money uneconomically, and there’s nothing like a yacht for doing it.  I’ve no use for racing, and moreover it’s too difficult not to mix with rascals if you go in for racing, and I don’t care for rascals.  Also it’s a mug’s game, and I don’t want to be a mug.  As for young women, no!  They only interest me at present as dancing partners, and they cost me nothing.  A good yacht’s the sole possible thing for my case, and a yacht brings you into contact with clean and decent people, not bookmakers.  I bought this boat for thirty-three thousand, and she’s a marvellous bargain, and that’s something.”

“But why spend money uneconomically at all?”

“Because I said and swore I would.  Didn’t I come back from the war and try all I knew to obtain the inestimable privilege of earning my living by doing something useful?  Did I succeed in obtaining the privilege?  Why, nobody would look at me!  And there were tens of thousands like me.  Well, I said I’d take it out of this noble country of mine, and I am doing; and I shall keep on doing until I’m tired.  These thirty men or so here might be at some useful productive work, fishing or merchant-marining.  They’re otherwise engaged.  They’re spending a pleasant wasteful month over our lunch and tea.  That’s what I enjoy.  It makes me smile to myself when I wake up in the middle of the night....  I’m showing my beloved country who’s won the Peace.”

“It’s a scheme,” murmured Mr. Prohack, rendered thoughtful as much by the quiet and intense manner, as by the matter, of his son’s oration.  “Boyish, of course, but not without charm.”

“We were most of us boys,” said Charlie.

Mr. Prohack marshalled, in his head, the perfectly plain, simple reasoning necessary to crush Charlie to powder, and, before crushing him, to expose to him the crudity of his conceptions of organised social existence.  But he said nothing, having hit on another procedure for carrying out his parental duty to Charles.  Shortly afterwards they departed from the yacht in the launch.  Long ere they reached the waiting motor-car the bunting had been hauled down.