earnest disgust.

"My boy," said Mr. Prohack, "you have my most serious sympathy. Your life must be terribly complicated by this search for perfection."

"Yes, that's all very well," said Charlie.

"Where's Sissie?"

"Hanged if I know!"

"I heard her playing the piano not five minutes since."

"So did I."

Machin, the house-parlourmaid, then intervened:

"Miss Sissie had a telephone call, and she's gone out, sir."

"Where to?"

"She didn't say, sir. She only said she wouldn't be in for dinner, sir. I made sure she'd told you herself, sir."

The two men, by means of their eyes, transmitted to each other a unanimous judgment upon the whole female sex, and sat down to dine alone in the stricken house. The dinner was extremely frugal, this being the opening day of Mrs. Prohack's new era of intensive economy, but the obvious pleasure of Machin in serving only men brightened up somewhat its brief course. Charlie was taciturn and curt, though not impolite. Mr. Prohack, whose private high spirits not even the amazing and inexcusable absence of his daughter could impair, pretended to a decent woe, and chatted as he might have done to a fellow-clubman on a wet Sunday night at the Club.

At the end of the meal Charlie produced the enormous widow's cruse which he called his cigarette-case and offered his father a cigarette.

"Doing anything to-night?" asked Mr. Prohack, puffing.

"No," answered desperately Charlie, puffing.

"Ring the bell, will you?"

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