“Fancy, if a man finds out that he is a prophet what ought he to do?”

The lady’s-maid rattled her bones.

“Let it alone, sir,” she answered.  “Let it alone, Master Hennessey.”

“Well, but what d’you mean by that?”

“What I say sir.  I can’t speak different, nor mean other.”

“But can’t you explain, Fancy?”

“Oh, Master Hennessey, the lives that have been wrecked, the homes that have been broke up by explainings!”

Her eye seemed suddenly lit from within by some fever of sad, worldly knowledge.

“Well, but—­” the Prophet began.

“I know it, Master Hennessey, and I can’t know other.”

She sighed, and her gaze became fixed like that of a typhoid patient in a dream.

“Them that knows other let them declare it,” she ejaculated.  “I say again, as I did afore—­the homes that have been broken up by explainings!”

She tatted.  The Prophet bowed before her decision and left the apartment feeling rather hungry.  Fancy Quinglet’s crumbs were not always crumbs of comfort.  He resolved to apply again to Mr. Malkiel, and this time to make the application in person.  But before he did so he thought it right to tell Mrs. Merillia, who was still steeped in bandages, of his intention.  He therefore went straight to her room from Fancy Quinglet’s.  Mrs. Merillia was lying upon a couch reading a Russian novel.  A cup of tea stood beside her upon a table near a bowl of red and yellow tulips, a canary was singing in its cage amid a shower of bird-seed, and “the dog” lay stretched before the blazing fire upon a milk-white rug, over which a pale ray of winter sunshine fell.  As the Prophet came in Mrs. Merillia glanced up.

“Hennessey,” she said, “you are growin’ to look like Lord Brandling, when he combined the Premiership with the Foreign Office and we had that dreadful complication with Iceland.  My dear boy, you are corrugated with thought and care.  What is the matter?  My ankle is much better.  You need not be anxious about me.  Has Venus been playing you another jade’s trick?”

The Prophet sat down and stroked Beau’s sable back with his forefinger.

“I have scarcely looked at Venus since you were injured, grannie,” he answered.  “I have scarcely dared to.”

“I’m glad to hear it.  Since the days of Adonis she has always had a dangerous influence on young men.  If you want to look at anybody, look at that pretty, sensible cousin of Robert Green’s.”

“Lady Enid.  Yes, she is sensible.  I believe she is in Hampshire staying with the Churchmores.”

He looked calmer for a moment, but the corrugated expression quickly returned.

“Grannie,” he said, “I think it my duty to make an effort to see Mr. Malkiel.”

“The Almanac man.  What do you want with him?”

She tapped one of her small, mittened hands over the other and slightly twisted her long and pointed nose.