Mr. Prohack

"I don't know,--any more than I know why you went out before dinner and came back after dinner."

"Would you like to know why I went out?" Sissie spoke with sudden ingratiatingness.

"No, not at all. But I should like to know why you went out without telling anybody. When people are expected to dinner and fail to appear they usually give notice of the failure."

"But, father, I told Machin."

"I said 'anybody.' Don't you know that the whole theory of the society which you adorn is based on the a.s.sumption that Machin is n.o.body?"

"I was called away in a frightful hurry, and you and mother were gossiping upstairs, and it's as much as one's life is worth to disturb you two when you are together."

"Oh! That's news."

"Besides, I should have had to argue with mother, and you know what she is."

"You flatter me. I don't even know what _you_ are, and you're elementary compared to your mother."

"Anyhow, I'm glad mother's in bed with a headache. I came in here trembling just now. Mother would have made such a tremendous fuss although she's perfectly aware that it's not the slightest use making a fuss.... Only makes me stupid and obstinate. Showers and showers of questions there'd have been, whereas you haven't asked a single one."

"Yes, you're rather upset by my lack of curiosity. But let me just point out that it is not consistent with my paternal duty to sit here and listen to you slanging your mother. As a daughter you have vast privileges, but you mustn't presume on them. There are some things I couldn't stand from any woman without protest."

"But you must admit that mother _is_ a bit awful when she breaks loose."

"No. I've never known your mother awful, or even a bit awful."

"You aren't being intellectually honest, dad."

"I am."

"Ah! Well, of course she only shows her best side to _you_."

"She has no other side. In that sense she is certainly one-sided. Here!

Have another." Mr. Prohack took the apple from his pocket, and threw it across the table to Sissie, who caught it.

II

Mr. Prohack was extremely happy; and Sissie too, in so far as concerned the chat with her father, was extremely happy. They adored each other, and they adored the awful woman laid low with a headache. Sissie's hat and cloak, which she had dropped carelessly on a chair, slipped to the floor, the hat carried away by the cloak. Mr. Prohack rose and picked them up, took them out of the room, and returned.

"So now you've straightened up, and you're pleased with yourself,"

observed Sissie.

"So now," said he. "Perhaps I may turn on my curiosity tap."

"Don't," said Sissie. "I'm very gloomy. I'm very disappointed. I might burst into tears at any moment.... Yes,

"Out with it."

"Oh, it's nothing! It's only that I saw a chance of making some money and it hasn't come off."

"But what do you want to make money for?"

"I like that. Hasn't mother been telling me off and on all day that something will have to be done?"

"Done about what?"

"About economy, naturally." Sissie spoke rather sharply.

"But you don't mean your mother has spent the day in urging you to go forth and earn money!"

"Of course she hasn't, father. How absurd you are! You know very well mother would hate the idea of me earning money. Hate it! But I mean to earn some. Surely it's much better to bring more money in than to pinch and sc.r.a.pe. I loathe pinching and sc.r.a.ping."

"It's a sound loathing."

"And I thought I'd got hold of a scheme. But it's too big. I have fifty pounds odd of my own, but what use is fifty pounds when a hundred's needed? It's all off and I'm in the last stage of depression."

She threw away the core of the second apple.

"Is that port? I'll have some."

"So that you're short of fifty pounds?" said Mr. Prohack, obediently pouring out the port--but only half a gla.s.s. "Well, I might be able to let you have fifty pounds myself, if you would deign to accept it."

Sissie cried compa.s.sionately: "But you haven't got a cent, dad!"

"Oh! Haven't I? Did your mother tell you that?"

"Well, she didn't exactly say so."

"I should hope not! And allow me to inform you, my girl, that in accusing me of not having a cent you're being guilty of the worst possible taste. Children should always a.s.sume that their fathers have mysterious stores of money, and that nothing is beyond their resources, and if they don't rise to every demand it's only because in their inscrutable wisdom they deem it better not to. Or it may be from mere cussedness."

"Yes," said Sissie. "That's what I used to think when I was young. But I've looked up your salary in _Whitaker's Almanac_."

"It was very improper of you. However, nothing is secret in these days, and so I don't mind telling you that I've backed a winner to-day--not to-day, but some little time since--and I can if necessary and agreeable let you have fifty pounds."

Mr. Prohack as it were shook his crest in plenary contentment. He had the same sensation of creativeness as he had had a while earlier with his son,--a G.o.dlike sensation. And he was delighted with his girl. She was so young and so old. And her efforts to play the woman of the world with him were so comic and so touching. Only two or three years since she had been driving a motor-van in order to defeat the Germans. She had received twenty-eight s.h.i.+llings a week for six days of from twelve to fourteen hours. She would leave the house at eight and come back at eight, nine, or ten. And on her return, pale enough, she would laugh and say she had had her dinner and would go to bed. But she had not had her dinner. She was simply too tired and nervously exasperated to eat. And she would lie in bed and tremble and cry quietly from fatigue. She did not know that her parents knew these details. The cook, her confidante, had told them, much later. And Mr. Prohack had decreed that Sissie must never know that they knew. She had stuck to the task during a whole winter, skidding on gla.s.sy asphalt, slimy wood, and slithery stone-setts in the East End, and had met with but one accident, a minor affair. The experience seemed to have had no permanent effect on her, but it had had a permanent effect on her father's att.i.tude towards her,--her mother had always strongly objected to what she called the "episode," had shown only relief when it concluded, and had awarded no merit for it.

"Can you definitely promise me fifty pounds, dad?" Sissie asked quietly.

Mr. Prohack made no articulate answer. His reply was to take out his cheque-book and his fountain-pen and fill in a cheque to _Miss Sissie Prohack or order_. He saw no just reason for differentiating between the s.e.xes in his offspring. He had given a cheque to Charlie; he gave one to Sissie.

"Then you aren't absolutely stone-broke," said Sissie, smiling.

"I should not so describe myself."

"It's just like mother," she murmured, the smile fading.