ned
disappointment, but for a different reason. Ozzie wanted to have Sissie
as much as possible to himself.

Mr. Prohack yawned in the car.

"You're over-tired, Arthur. It's the Turkish bath," said Eve with
commiseration. This was a bad enough mistake on her part, but she
worsened it by adding: "Perhaps the wisest thing would be for us all to
go home."

Mr. Prohack was extremely exhausted, and would have given his head to go
home; but so odd, so contrary, so deceitful and so silly was his nature
that he replied:

"Darling! Where on earth do you get these ideas from? There's nothing
like a Turkish bath for stimulating you, and I'm not at all tired. I
never felt better in my life. But the atmosphere of that theatre would
make anybody yawn."

The ball was held in a picture-gallery where an exhibition of the
International Portrait Society was in progress. The crush of cars at the
portals was as keen as that at the portals of the Metropolitan. And all
the persons who got out of the cars seemed as fresh as if they had just
got out of bed. Mr. Prohack was astonished at the vast number of people
who didn't care what time they went to bed because they didn't care what
time they arose; he was in danger of being morbidly obsessed by the
extraordinary prevalence of idleness. The rooms were full of brilliant
idlers in all colours. Everybody except chorus girls had thought fit to
appear at this ball in aid of the admirably charitable Chorus Girls' Aid
Association. And as everybody was also on the walls, the dancers had to
compete with their portraits--a competition in which many of them were
well beaten.

After they had visited the supper-room, where both Sissie and her mother
did wonderful feats of degustation and Mr. Prohack drank all that was
good for him, Sissie ordered her father to dance with her. He refused.
She went off with Ozzie, while her parents sat side by side on gold
chairs like ancestors. Sissie repeated her command, and Mr. Prohack was
about to disobey when Eliza Fiddle dawned upon the assemblage.

The supernatural creature had been rehearsing until 3 a.m., she had been
trying on clothes from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. She had borne the chief
weight of _Smack Your Face_, on her unique shoulders for nearly three
hours and a half. She had changed into an unforgettable black
ball-dress, cut to demonstrate in the clearest fashion that her
shoulders had suffered no harm; and here she was as fresh as Aphrodite
from the