CHAPTER XV

THE HEAVY FATHER

I

Within a few moments of his final waking up the next morning, Mr. Prohack beheld Eve bending over him, the image of solicitude.  She was dressed for outdoor business.

“How do you feel?” she asked, in a tender tone that demanded to know the worst at once.

“Why?” asked Mr. Prohack, thus with one word, and a smile to match, criticising her tone.

“You looked so dreadfully tired last night.  I did feel sorry for you, darling.  Don’t you think you’d better stay in bed to-day?”

“Can you seriously suggest such a thing?” he cried.  “What about my daily programme if I stay in bed?  I have undertaken to be idle, and nobody can be scientifically idle in bed.  I’m late already.  Where’s my breakfast?  Where are my newspapers?  I must begin the day without the loss of another moment.  Please give me my dressing-gown.”

“I very much wonder how your blood-pressure is,” Eve complained.

“And you, I suppose, are perfectly well?”

“Oh, yes, I am.  I’m absolutely cured.  Dr. Veiga is really very marvellous.  But I always told you he was.”

“Well,” said Mr. Prohack.  “What’s sauce for the goose has to be sauce for the gander.  If you’re perfectly well, so am I. You can’t have the monopoly of good health in this marriage.  What’s that pamphlet you’ve got in your hand, my dove?”

“Oh!  It’s nothing.  It’s only about the League of all the Arts.  Mr. Morfey gave it to me.”

“I suppose it was that pamphlet you were reading last night in the boudoir instead of coming to bed.  Eve, you’re hiding something from me.  Where are you going to in such a hurry?”

“I’m not hiding anything, you silly boy....  I thought I’d just run along and have a look at that house.  You see, if it isn’t at all the kind of thing to suit us, me going first will save you the trouble of going.”

“What house?” exclaimed Mr. Prohack with terrible emphasis.

“But Charlie told me he’d told you all about it,” Eve protested innocently.

“Charlie told you no such thing,” Mr. Prohack contradicted her.  “If he told you anything at all, he merely told you that he’d mentioned a house to me in the most casual manner.”

Eve proceeded blandly: 

“It’s in Manchester Square, very handy for the Wallace Gallery, and you know how fond you are of pictures.  It’s on sale, furniture and all; but it can be rented for a year to see how it suits us.  Of course it may not suit us a bit.  I understand it has some lovely rooms.  Charlie says it would be exactly the thing for big receptions.”

“Big receptions!  I shall have nothing to do with it.  Now we’ve lost our children even this house is too big for us.  And I know what the houses in Manchester Square are.  You’ve said all your life you hate receptions.”