“You aren’t fifty.”

“I’m five hundred.  And this coffee is remarkably thin.”

“Let me taste it.”

“Yes, you’d rob me of my coffee now!” said Mr. Prohack, surrendering his cup.  “Is it thin, or isn’t it?  I pride myself on living the higher life; my stomach is not my inexorable deity; but even on the mountain top which I inhabit there must be a limit to the thinness of the coffee.”

Eve (as he called her, after the mother and prototype of all women—­her earthly name was Marian) sipped the coffee.  She wrinkled her forehead and then glanced at him in trouble.

“Yes, it’s thin,” she said.  “But I’ve had to ration the cook.  Oh, Arthur, I am going to make you unhappy after all.  It’s impossible for me to manage any longer on the housekeeping allowance.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before, child?”

“I have told you ‘before,’” said she.  “If you hadn’t happened to mention the coffee, I mightn’t have said anything for another fortnight.  You started to give me more money in June, and you said that was the utmost limit you could go to, and I believed it was.  But it isn’t enough.  I hate to bother you, and I feel ashamed—­”

“That’s ridiculous.  Why should you feel ashamed?”

“Well, I’m like that.”

“You’re revelling in your own virtuousness, my girl.  Now in last week’s Economist it said that the Index Number of commodity prices had slightly fallen these last few weeks.”

“I don’t know anything about indexes and the Economist,” Eve retorted.  “But I know what coffee is a pound, and I know what the tradesmen’s books are—­”

At this point she cried without warning.

“No,” murmured Mr. Prohack, soothingly, caressingly.  “You mustn’t baptise me.  I couldn’t bear it.”  And he kissed her eyes.

III

“I know we can’t afford any more for housekeeping,” she whispered, sniffing damply.  “And I’m ashamed I can’t manage, and I knew I should make you unhappy.  What with idle and greedy working-men, and all these profiteers...!  It’s a shame!”

“Yes,” said Mr. Prohack.  “It’s what our Charlie fought for, and got wounded twice for, and won the M.C. for.  That’s what it is.  But you see we’re the famous salaried middle-class that you read so much about in the papers, and we’re going through the famous process of being crushed between the famous upper and nether millstones.  Those millstones have been approaching each other—­and us—­for some time.  Now they’ve begun to nip.  That funny feeling in your inside that’s causing you still to baptise me, in spite of my protest—­that’s the first real nip.”

She caught her breath.

“Arthur,” she said.  “If you go on like that I shall scream.”

“Do,” Mr. Prohack encouraged her.  “But of course not too loud.  At the same time don’t forget that I’m a humourist.  Humourists make jokes when they’re happy, and when they’re unhappy they make jokes.”