They reached the dining-room, an apartment in glossy bird’s-eye maple set in the midst of the virgin-white promenade deck.

“By the way, lunch, please,” said Charlie.

“Yes, sir,” responded eagerly the elder of two attendants in jackets striped blue and white.

“Have a wash, guv’nor?  Thanks, skipper, that’ll do for the present.”

Mr. Prohack washed in amplitudinous marble, and wiped his paternal face upon diaper into which was woven the name “Northwind.”  He then, with his son, ate an enormous and intricate lunch and drank champagne out of crystal engraved with the name “Northwind,” served to him by a ceremonious person in white gloves.  Charlie was somewhat taciturn, but over the coffee he seemed to brighten up.

“Well, what do you think of the old hulk?”

“She must need an awful lot of men,” said Mr. Prohack.

“Pretty fair.  The wages bill is seven hundred a month.”

“She’s enormous,” continued Mr. Prohack lamely.

“Oh, no!  Seven hundred tons Thames measurement.  You see those funnels over there,” and Charlie pointed through the port windows to a row of four funnels rising over great sheds.  “That’s the Mauretania.  She’s a hundred times as big as this thing.  She could almost sling this affair in her davits.”

“Indeed!  Still, I maintain that this antique wreck is enormous,” Mr. Prohack insisted.

They walked out on deck.

“Hello!  Here’s the chit.  You can always count on her!” said Charles.

The launch was again approaching the yacht, and a tiny figure with a despatch case on her lap sat smiling in the stern-sheets.

“She’s come down by train,” Charles explained.

Miss Winstock in her feminineness made a delicious spectacle on the spotless deck.  She nearly laughed with delight as she acknowledged Mr. Prohack’s grave salute and shook hands with him, but when Charlie said:  “Anything urgent?” she grew grave and tense, becoming the faithful, urgent, confidential employe in an instant.

“Only this,” she said, opening the despatch case and producing a telegram.

“Confound it!” remarked Charles, having read the telegram.  “Here, you, Snow.  Please see that Miss Winstock has something to eat at once.  That’ll do, Miss Winstock.”

“Yes, Mr. Prohack,” she said dutifully.

“And his mother thought he would be marrying her!” Mr. Prohack senior reflected.  “He’ll no more marry her than he’ll marry Machin.  Goodness knows whom he will marry.  It might be a princess.”

“You remember that paper concern—­newsprint stuff—­I’ve mentioned to you once or twice,” said Charlie to his father, dropping into a basket-chair.  “Sit down, will you, dad?  I’ve had no luck with it yet.”  He flourished the telegram.  “Here the new manager I appointed has gone and got rheumatic fever up in Aberdeen.  No good for six months at least, if ever.  It’s a great thing if I could only really get it going.  But no!  The luck’s wrong.  And yet a sound fellow with brains could put that affair into such shape in a year that I could sell it at a profit of four hundred per cent to the Southern Combine.  However—­”