a controlled but intense impatience because Charlie did not produce the car instantly from amidst the confused hordes of cars that waited in the surrounding streets.  Moreover, as regards the ball, he had foolishly put himself in a false position; for he was compelled to pretend that he had purchased the tickets because he personally wanted to go to the ball.  Had he not been learning to dance?  Now the fact was that he looked forward to the ball with terror.  He had never performed publicly.  He proceeded from one pretence to another.  When Charlie stated curtly that he, Charlie, was going to no ball, he feigned disappointment, saying that Charlie ought to go for his sister’s sake.  Yet he was greatly relieved at Charlie’s departure (even in Lady Massulam’s car); he could not stomach the notion of Charlie cynically watching his infant steps on the polished, treacherous floor.  In the matter of Charlie, Oswald Morfey also feigned disappointment, but for a different reason.  Ozzie wanted to have Sissie as much as possible to himself.

Mr. Prohack yawned in the car.

“You’re over-tired, Arthur.  It’s the Turkish bath,” said Eve with commiseration.  This was a bad enough mistake on her part, but she worsened it by adding:  “Perhaps the wisest thing would be for us all to go home.”

Mr. Prohack was extremely exhausted, and would have given his head to go home; but so odd, so contrary, so deceitful and so silly was his nature that he replied: 

“Darling!  Where on earth do you get these ideas from?  There’s nothing like a Turkish bath for stimulating you, and I’m not at all tired.  I never felt better in my life.  But the atmosphere of that theatre would make anybody yawn.”

The ball was held in a picture-gallery where an exhibition of the International Portrait Society was in progress.  The crush of cars at the portals was as keen as that at the portals of the Metropolitan.  And all the persons who got out of the cars seemed as fresh as if they had just got out of bed.  Mr. Prohack was astonished at the vast number of people who didn’t care what time they went to bed because they didn’t care what time they arose; he was in danger of being morbidly obsessed by the extraordinary prevalence of idleness.  The rooms were full of brilliant idlers in all colours.  Everybody except chorus girls had thought fit to appear at this ball in aid of the admirably charitable Chorus Girls’ Aid Association.  And as everybody was also on the walls, the dancers had to compete with their portraits—­a competition in which many of them were well beaten.

After they had visited the supper-room, where both Sissie and her mother did wonderful feats of degustation and Mr. Prohack drank all that was good for him, Sissie ordered her father to dance with her.  He refused.  She went off with Ozzie, while her parents sat side by side on gold chairs like ancestors.  Sissie repeated her command, and Mr. Prohack was about to disobey when Eliza Fiddle dawned upon the assemblage.