se of entertainment.

And in this way the affair continued between the four, while Mr. Softly
Bishop, abandoning his beloved to her fate, chatted murmuringly with Mr.
Prohack about the Oil Market, as to which of course Mr. Prohack was the
prince of authorities. Mrs. Prohack and her daughter and son-in-law
ranged at ease over all the arts without exception, save the one
art--that of musical comedy--in which Miss Fancy was versed. Mr. Prohack
was amazed at the skilled cruelty of his women. He wanted to say to Miss
Fancy: "Don't you believe it! My wife is only a rather nice ordinary
housekeeping sort of little woman, and as for my daughter, she cooks her
husband's meals--and jolly badly, I bet." He ought to have been pleased
at the discomfiture of Miss Fancy, whom he detested and despised; but he
was not; he yearned to succour her; he even began to like her.

And not Eve and Sissie alone amazed him. Oswald amazed him. Oswald had
changed. His black silk stock had gone the way of his ribboned
eye-glass; his hair was arranged differently; he closely resembled an
average plain man,--he, the unique Ozzie! With all his faults, he had
previously been both good-natured and negligent, but his expression was
now one of sternness and of resolute endeavour. Sissie had already
metamorphosed him. Even now he was obediently following her lead and her
mood. Mr. Prohack's women had evidently determined to revenge themselves
for being asked to meet Miss Fancy at lunch, and Ozzie had been set on
to assist them. Further, Mr. Prohack noticed that Sissie was eyeing her
mother's necklace with a reprehending stare. The next instant he found
himself the target of the same stare. The girl was accusing him of
folly, while questioning Ozzie's definition of the difference between
Georgian and neo-Georgian verse. The girl had apparently become the
censor of society at large.

Mysterious cross-currents ran over the table in all directions. Mr.
Prohack looked around the noisy restaurant packed with tables, and
wondered whether cross-currents were running invisibly over all the
tables, and what was the secret force of fashionable fleeting convention
which enabled women with brains far inferior to his own to use it
effectively for the fighting of sanguinary battles.

At last, when Miss Fancy had been beaten into silence and the other
three were carrying on a brilliant high-browed conversation over the
corpse of her up-to-dateness, Mr. Prohack's nerves r