the Empire closer together I’ll try to do it without making a profit out of it.  At the moment all I’m after is certain, sure, fixed interest.  Hence—­Government securities, British Government or Colonial!  Britain is of course rotten to the core, always was, always will be.  Still, I’ll take my chances.  I’m infernally insular where investment is concerned.  There’s one thing to be said about the British Empire—­you do know where you are in it.  And I don’t mind some municipal stocks.  I even want some.  I can conceive the smash-up of the British Empire, but I cannot conceive Manchester defaulting in its interest payments.  Can you?” And he looked round and paused for a reply, and no reply came.  Nobody dared to boast himself capable of conceiving Manchester’s default.

Towards the end of the arduous day Mr. Prohack departed from the City, leaving behind him an immense reputation for financial sagacity, and a scheme of investment under which he could utterly count upon a modest regular income of L17,000 per annum.  He was sacrificing over L5,000 per annum in order to be free from an investor’s anxieties, and he reckoned that his peace of mind was cheap at a hundred pounds a week.  This detail alone shows to what an extent the man’s taste for costly luxuries had grown.

Naturally he arrived home swollen.  Now it happened that Eve also, by reason of her triumph in regard to the house in Manchester Square, had swelled head.  A conflict of individualities occurred.  A trifle, even a quite pleasant trifle!  Nothing that the servants might not hear with advantage.  But before you could say ‘knife’ Mr. Prohack had said that he would go away for a holiday and abandon Eve to manage the removal to Manchester Square how she chose, and Ere had leapt on to the challenge and it was settled that Mr. Prohack should go to Frinton-on-Sea.

Eve selected Frinton-on-Sea for him because Dr. Veiga had recommended it for herself.  She had a broad notion of marriage as a commonwealth.  She loved to take Mr. Prohack’s medicines, and she was now insisting on his taking her watering-places.  Mr. Prohack said that the threatened great strike might prevent his journey.  Pooh!  She laughed at such fears.  She drove him herself to Liverpool Street.

“You may see your friend Lady Massulam,” said she, as the car entered the precincts of the station. (Once again he was struck by the words ‘your friend’ prefixed to Lady Massulam; but he offered no comment on them.)

“Why Lady Massulam?” he asked.

“Didn’t you know she’s got a house at Frinton?” replied Mrs. Prohack.  “Everybody has in these days.  It’s the thing.”

She didn’t see him into the train, because she was in a hurry about butlers.  Mr. Prohack was cast loose in the booking-hall and had a fine novel sensation of freedom.

II