Then he sat down and applied himself to the property advertisements in the Signal, a form of sensational serial which usually enthralled him—­but not to-night.  He allowed the paper to lapse on to the floor, and then rose impatiently, rearranged the thick dark blue curtains behind the radiator, and finally yielded to the silent call of the mechanical piano-player.  He quite knew that to dally with the piano-player while smoking a high-class cigar was to insult the cigar.  But he did not care.  He tilted the cigar upwards from an extreme corner of his mouth, and through the celestial smoke gazed at the titles of the new music rolls which had been delivered that day, and which were ranged on the top of the piano itself.

And while he did so he was thinking: 

“Why in thunder didn’t the little thing come and tell me at once about that kid and his dog-bite?  I wonder why she didn’t!  She seemed only to mention it by accident.  I wonder why she didn’t bounce into the bathroom and tell me at once?”

But it was untrue that he sought vainly for an answer to this riddle.  He was aware of the answer.  He even kept saying over the answer to himself: 

“She’s made up her mind I’ve been teasing her a bit too much lately about those kids and their precious illnesses.  And she’s doing the dignified.  That’s what she’s doing!  She’s doing the dignified!”

Of course, instantly after his tea he ought to have gone upstairs to inspect the wounded victim of dogs.  The victim was his own child, and its mother was his wife.  He knew that he ought to have gone upstairs long since.  He knew that he ought now to go, and the sooner the better!  But somehow he could not go; he could not bring himself to go.  In the minor and major crises of married life there are not two partners, but four; each partner has a dual personality; each partner is indeed two different persons, and one of these fights against the other, with the common result of a fatal inaction.

The wickeder of the opposing persons in Edward Henry, getting the upper hand of the more virtuous, sniggered.  “Dirty teeth, indeed!  Blood-poisoning, indeed!  Why not rabies, while she’s about it?  I guarantee she’s dreaming of coffins and mourning coaches already!”

Scanning nonchalantly the titles of the music rolls, he suddenly saw:  “Funeral March.  Chopin.”

“She shall have it,” he said, affixing the roll to the mechanism.  And added:  “Whatever it is!”

For he was not acquainted with the Funeral March from Chopin’s Pianoforte Sonata.  His musical education had, in truth, begun only a year earlier—­with the advertisements of the “Pianisto” mechanical player.  He was a judge of advertisements, and the “Pianisto” literature pleased him in a high degree.  He justifiably reckoned that he could distinguish between honest and dishonest advertising.  He made a deep study of the question of mechanical players, and deliberately came to the conclusion that the Pianisto was the best.  It was also the most costly.  But one of the conveniences of having six thousand pounds a year is that you need not deny yourself the best mechanical player because it happens to be the most costly.  He bought a Pianisto, and incidentally he bought a superb grand piano and exiled the old cottage piano to the nursery.