“Arthur,” said she, “I never told you that you’d forgotten to wind up that clock on Sunday night.  It stopped this evening while you were out, and I had to wind it and I only guessed what the time was.”

CHAPTER XII

THE PRACTICE OF IDLENESS

I

At ten minutes to eleven the next morning Mr. Prohack rushed across the pavement, and sprang head-first into the original Eagle (now duly repaired) with the velocity and agility of a man long accustomed to the fact that seconds are more precious than six-pences and minutes than banknotes.  And Carthew slammed the door on him like a conjuror performing the final act of a trick before an audience of three thousand people.

Mr. Prohack was late.  He was late on this the first full day of his career as a consciously and scientifically idle man.  Carthew knew that his employer was late; and certainly the people in his house knew that he was late.  Mr. Prohack’s breakfast in bed had been late, which meant that his digestive and reposeful hour of newspaper reading was thrown forward.  And then he had actually been kept out of his own bathroom, through the joint fault of Sissie and her mother, who had apparently determined to celebrate Sissie’s definite release from the dance-studio, and Mrs. Prohack’s astonishing recovery from traumatic neurasthenia, by a thorough visitation and reorganisation of the house and household.  Those two, re-established in each other’s affection, had been holding an inquisition in the bathroom, of all rooms, at the very moment when Mr. Prohack needed the same, with the consequence that he found the bath empty instead of full, and the geyser not even lighted.  Yet they well knew that he had a highly important appointment at the tailor’s at ten forty-five, followed by other just as highly important appointments!  The worst of it was that he could not take their crime seriously because he was on such intimate and conspiratorial terms with each of them separately.  On the previous evening he had exchanged wonderful and rather dangerous confidences with his daughter, and, further on in the night he and her mother had decided that the latter’s fantastic excursion to the Grand Babylon Hotel should remain a secret.  And Sissie, as much as her mother, had taken advantage of his helplessness in the usual unscrupulous feminine manner.  They went so far as to smile quasi-maternally at his boyish busy-ness.

Now no sooner had Carthew slammed the door of the Eagle and got into the driving-seat than a young woman, a perfect stranger to Mr. Prohack, appeared, and through the open window asked in a piteous childlike voice if Mr. Prohack was indeed Mr. Prohack, and, having been informed that this was so, expressed the desire to speak with him.  Mr. Prohack was beside himself with annoyance and thwarted energy.  Was the entire universe uniting against the execution of his programme?