“Arthur,” she called from the bedroom.

“Hullo?”

“I do think this is really too silly.”

“You’re not paid to think, my girl.”

A pause.

“Arthur,” she called from the bedroom.

“Hullo?”

“You’re sure you won’t blurt it out to them when I’m not there?”

He only replied:  “I’m sorry you’ve got such a frightful headache, Marian.  You wouldn’t have these headaches if you took my advice.”

A pause.

“I’m in bed.”

“All right.  Stay there.”

When he had finished his cigarette, he went into the bedroom.  Yes, she was veritably in bed.

“You are a pig, Arthur.  I wonder how many wives—­”

He put his hand over her mouth.

“Stop,” he said.  “I’m not like you.  I don’t need to be told what I know already.”

“But really—!” She dropped her head on one side and began to laugh, and continued to laugh, rather hysterically, until she could not laugh any more.  “Oh, dear!  We are the queerest pair!”

“It is possible,” said he.  “You’re forgotten the eau-de-cologne.”  He handed her the bottle.  “It is quite possible that we’re the queerest pair, but this is a very serious day in the history of the Prohack family.  The Prohack family has been starving, and some one’s given it an enormous beefsteak.  Now it’s highly dangerous to give a beefsteak to a starving person.  The consequences might be fatal.  That’s why it’s so serious.  That’s why I must have time to think.”

The sound of Sissie playing a waltz on the piano came up from the drawing-room.  Mr. Prohack started to dance all by himself in the middle of the bedroom floor.

CHAPTER V

CHARLIE

I

When Mr. Prohack, in his mature but still rich velvet jacket, came down to dinner, he found his son Charlie leaning against the mantelpiece in a new dark brown suit, and studying The Owner-Driver.  Charlie seemed never to read anything but motor-car and light-car and side-car and motor-bicycle periodical literature; but he read it conscientiously, indefatigably, and completely—­advertisements and all.  He read it as though it were an endless novel of passion and he an idle woman deprived of the society her heart longed for.  He possessed a motor-bicycle which he stabled in a mews behind the Square.  He had possessed several such machines; he bought, altered, and sold them, apparently always with profit to himself.  He had no interest in non-mechanical literature or in any of the arts.

“Your mother’s gone to bed with a headache,” said Mr. Prohack, with a fair imitation of melancholy.

“Oh!” said the young man apathetically.  His face had a wearied, disillusioned expression.

“Is this the latest?” asked his father, indicating the new brown suit.  “My respectful congratulations.  Very smart, especially at the waist.”