few days.... One doesn't know what
to think. And there's something else. Every morning for the last three
or four weeks Sissie's gone out somewhere, for an hour or two, quite
regularly. And where she went I've never been able to find out. Of
course with a girl like her it doesn't do to ask too direct
questions.... Ah! I should like to have seen my mother in my place. I
know what she'd have done!"

"What would your mother have done? She always seemed to me to be a
fairly harmless creature."

"Yes, to you!... Do you think we ought to inform the police!"

"No!"

"I'm so glad. The necklace and Sissie coming on top of each other! No,
it would be too much!"

"It never rains but it pours, does it?" observed Mr. Prohack.

"But what _are_ we to do?"

"Just what your mother would have done. Your mother would have argued
like this: Either Sissie is staying away against her will or she is
staying away of her own accord. If the former, it means an accident, and
we are bound to hear shortly from one of the hospitals. If the latter,
we can only sit tight. Your mother had a vigorous mind and that is how
she would have looked at things."

"I never know how to take you, Arthur," said Mrs. Prohack, and went on:
"And what makes it all the more incomprehensible IA that yesterday
afternoon Sissie went with me to Jay's to see about the wedding-dress."

"But why should that make it all the more incomprehensible?"

"Don't you think it does, somehow? I do."

"Did she giggle at Jay's?"

"Oh, no! Except once. Yes, I think she giggled once. That was when the
fitter said she hoped we should give them plenty of time, because most
customers rushed them so. I remember thinking how queer it was that
Sissie should laugh so much at a perfectly simple remark like that. Oh!
Arthur!"

"Now, my child," said Mr. Prohack firmly. "Don't get into your head that
Sissie has gone off hers. Yesterday you thought for quite half an hour
that I was suffering from incipient lunacy. Let that suffice you for the
present. Be philosophical. The source of tranquillity is within.
Remember that, and remind me of it too, because I'm apt to forget it....
We can do nothing at the moment. I will now get up, and I warn you that
I shall want a large breakfast and you to pour out my coffee and read
the interesting bits out of _The Daily Picture_ to me."

At eleven o'clock of the morning the _status quo_ was still maintaining
itself within the noble mansion at Manche