For a youth who had nothing in the world but what remained of his wound gratuity and other trifling military emoluments, and what he made out of commerce in motor-bicycles, Charlie spent a lot in clothes.  His mother had advised his father to “speak to him about it.”  But his father had declined to offer any criticism, on the ground that Charlie had fought in Mesopotamia, Italy and France.  Moreover, Charlie had scotched any possible criticism by asserting that good clothes were all that stood between him and the ruin of his career.  “If I dressed like the dad,” he had once grimly and gloomily remarked, “it would be the beginning of the end for me.”

“Smart?” he now exclaimed, stepping forward.  “Look at that.”  He advanced his right leg a little.  “Look at that crease.  See where it falls?” The trouser-crease, which, as all wise men know, ought to have fallen exactly on the centre of the boot-lacing, fell about an inch to the left thereof.  “And I’ve tried this suit on four times!  All the bally tailors in London seem to think you’ve got nothing else to do but call and try on and try on and try on.  Never seems to occur to them that they don’t know their business.  It’s as bad as staff work.  However, if this fellow thinks I’m going to stick these trousers he’ll have the surprise of his life to-morrow morning.”  The youth spoke in a tone of earnest disgust.

“My boy,” said Mr. Prohack, “you have my most serious sympathy.  Your life must be terribly complicated by this search for perfection.”

“Yes, that’s all very well,” said Charlie.

“Where’s Sissie?”

“Hanged if I know!”

“I heard her playing the piano not five minutes since.”

“So did I.”

Machin, the house-parlourmaid, then intervened: 

“Miss Sissie had a telephone call, and she’s gone out, sir.”

“Where to?”

“She didn’t say, sir.  She only said she wouldn’t be in for dinner, sir.  I made sure she’d told you herself, sir.”

The two men, by means of their eyes, transmitted to each other a unanimous judgment upon the whole female sex, and sat down to dine alone in the stricken house.  The dinner was extremely frugal, this being the opening day of Mrs. Prohack’s new era of intensive economy, but the obvious pleasure of Machin in serving only men brightened up somewhat its brief course.  Charlie was taciturn and curt, though not impolite.  Mr. Prohack, whose private high spirits not even the amazing and inexcusable absence of his daughter could impair, pretended to a decent woe, and chatted as he might have done to a fellow-clubman on a wet Sunday night at the Club.

At the end of the meal Charlie produced the enormous widow’s cruse which he called his cigarette-case and offered his father a cigarette.

“Doing anything to-night?” asked Mr. Prohack, puffing.

“No,” answered desperately Charlie, puffing.

“Ring the bell, will you?”