“So now,” said he.  “Perhaps I may turn on my curiosity tap.”

“Don’t,” said Sissie.  “I’m very gloomy.  I’m very disappointed.  I might burst into tears at any moment....  Yes, I’m not joking.”

“Out with it.”

“Oh, it’s nothing!  It’s only that I saw a chance of making some money and it hasn’t come off.”

“But what do you want to make money for?”

“I like that.  Hasn’t mother been telling me off and on all day that something will have to be done?”

“Done about what?”

“About economy, naturally.”  Sissie spoke rather sharply.

“But you don’t mean your mother has spent the day in urging you to go forth and earn money!”

“Of course she hasn’t, father.  How absurd you are!  You know very well mother would hate the idea of me earning money.  Hate it!  But I mean to earn some.  Surely it’s much better to bring more money in than to pinch and scrape.  I loathe pinching and scraping.”

“It’s a sound loathing.”

“And I thought I’d got hold of a scheme.  But it’s too big.  I have fifty pounds odd of my own, but what use is fifty pounds when a hundred’s needed?  It’s all off and I’m in the last stage of depression.”

She threw away the core of the second apple.

“Is that port?  I’ll have some.”

“So that you’re short of fifty pounds?” said Mr. Prohack, obediently pouring out the port—­but only half a glass.  “Well, I might be able to let you have fifty pounds myself, if you would deign to accept it.”

Sissie cried compassionately:  “But you haven’t got a cent, dad!”

“Oh!  Haven’t I?  Did your mother tell you that?”

“Well, she didn’t exactly say so.”

“I should hope not!  And allow me to inform you, my girl, that in accusing me of not having a cent you’re being guilty of the worst possible taste.  Children should always assume that their fathers have mysterious stores of money, and that nothing is beyond their resources, and if they don’t rise to every demand it’s only because in their inscrutable wisdom they deem it better not to.  Or it may be from mere cussedness.”

“Yes,” said Sissie.  “That’s what I used to think when I was young.  But I’ve looked up your salary in Whitaker’s Almanac.”

“It was very improper of you.  However, nothing is secret in these days, and so I don’t mind telling you that I’ve backed a winner to-day—­not to-day, but some little time since—­and I can if necessary and agreeable let you have fifty pounds.”

Mr. Prohack as it were shook his crest in plenary contentment.  He had the same sensation of creativeness as he had had a while earlier with his son,—­a godlike sensation.  And he was delighted with his girl.  She was so young and so old.  And her efforts to play the woman of the world with him were so comic and so touching.  Only two or three years since she had been driving a motor-van in order to