t he more clearly than anybody
else understood the fearful trend of events.

Mr. Prohack had once, during the war, remarked on seeing F.F. glance at
the tape in the Club: "Look at F.F. afraid lest there may be some good
news." Nevertheless he liked F.F.

As editor of a financial weekly, F.F. naturally had to keep well under
control his world-sadness. High finance cannot prosper in an atmosphere
of world-sadness, and hates it. F.F. ought never to have become the
editor of a financial weekly; but he happened to be an expert
statistician, an honest man and a courageous man, and an expert in the
pathology of stock-markets, and on this score his proprietors excused
the slight traces of world-sadness occasionally to be found in the
paper. He might have left his post and obtained another; but to be
forced by fate to be editor of a financial weekly was F.F.'s chief
grievance in life, and he loved a good grievance beyond everything.

"But, my dear fellow," said F.F. with his melancholy ardent glance, when
Mr. Prohack had replied suitably to his opening question. "I'd no idea
you'd been unwell. I hope it isn't what's called a breakdown."

"Oh, no!" Mr. Prohack laughed nervously. "But you know what doctors are.
A little rest has been prescribed."

F.F. gazed at him softly compassionate, as if to indicate that nothing
but trouble could be expected under the present political regime. They
examined the tape together.

"Things can't go on much longer like this," observed F.F.
comprehensively, in front of the morning's messages from the capitals of
the world.

"Still," said Mr. Prohack, "we've won the war, haven't we?"

"I suppose we have," said F.F. and sighed.

Mr. Prohack felt that he had no more time for preliminaries, and in
order to cut them short started some ingenious but quite inexcusable
lying.

"You didn't chance to see old Paul Spinner going out as you came in?"

"No," answered F.F. "Why?"

"Nothing. Only a man in the morning-room was wanting to know if he was
still in the Club, and I told him I'd see."

"I hear," said F.F. after a moment, and in a lower voice, "I hear he's
getting up some big new oil scheme."

"Ah!" murmured Mr. Prohack, delighted at so favourable a coincidence,
with a wonderful imitation of casualness. "And what may that be?"

"Nobody knows. Some people would give a good deal to know. But if I'm
any judge of my Spinner they won't know till he's licked off all the
cream. It's marvellous