plete with every luxury
proper to the repast. He ate, drank, and read odd things in odd corners
of _The Times_, and at last he smoked.

He was on the edge of felicity in his miserableness when his
indefatigable women entered, all smiles. They had indeed been out, and
they were still arrayed for the street. On by one they removed or cast
aside such things as gloves, hats, coats, bags, until the study began to
bear some resemblance to a boudoir. Mr. Prohack, though cheerfully
grumbling at this, really liked it, for he was of those who think that
nothing furnishes a room so well as a woman's hat, provided it be not
permanently established.

Sissie even took off one shoe, on the plea that it hurt her, and there
the trifling article lay, fragile, gleaming and absurd. Mr. Prohack
appreciated it even more than the hats. He understood, perhaps better
than ever before, that though he had a vast passion for his wife, there
was enough emotion left in him to nourish an affection almost equally
vast for his daughter. She was a proud piece, was that girl, and he was
intensely proud of her. Nor did a realistic estimate of her faults of
character seem in the least to diminish his pride in her. She had
distinction; she had race. Mimi might possibly be able to make rings
round her in the pursuit of any practical enterprise, but her mere
manner of existing from moment to moment was superior to Mimi's. The
simple-minded parent was indeed convinced at heart that the world held
no finer young woman than Sissie Prohack. He reflected with
satisfaction: "She knows I'm old, but there's something young in me that
forces her to treat me as young; and moreover she adores me." He also
reflected: "Of course they're after something, these two. I can see a
put-up job in their eyes." Ah! He was ready for them, and the sensation
of being ready for them was like a tonic to him, raising him momentarily
above misery.

"You look much better, Arthur," said Eve, artfully preparing.

"I am," said he. "I've had a bath."

"Had you given up baths, dad?" asked Sissie, with a curl of the lips.

"No! But I mean I've had two baths. One in water and the other in
resignation."

"How dull!"

"I've been thinking about the arrangements for the wedding," Eve started
in a new, falsely careless tone, ignoring the badinage between her
husband and daughter, which she always privately regarded as tedious.

There it was! They had come to worry him about the wedding. He