“I don’t see that that helps us.  I consider the Government has treated you shamefully.  I wonder you important men in the Treasury haven’t formed a Trade Union before now.”

“Oh, Eve!  After all you’ve said about Trade Unions this last year!  You shock me!  We shall never he properly treated until we do form a Trade Union.  But we shall never form a Trade Union, because we’re too proud.  And we’d sooner see our children starve than yield in our pride.  That’s a fact.”

“There’s one thing—­we can’t move into a cheaper house.”

“No,” Mr. Prohack concurred.  “Because there isn’t one.”

Years earlier Mr. Prohack had bought the long lease of his house from the old man who, according to the logical London system, had built the house upon somebody else’s land on the condition that he paid rent for the land and in addition gave the house to the somebody else at the end of a certain period as a free gift.  By a payment of twelve pounds per annum Mr. Prohack was safe for forty years yet and he calculated that in forty years the ownership of the house would be a matter of some indifference both to him and to his wife.

“Well, as you’re so desperately wise, perhaps you’ll kindly tell me what we are to do.”

“I might borrow money on my insurance policy—­and speculate,” said Mr. Prohack gravely.

“Oh!  Arthur!  Do you really think you—­” Marian showed a wild gleam of hope.

“Or I might throw the money into the Serpentine,” Mr. Prohack added.

“Oh!  Arthur!  I could kill you.  I never know how to take you.”

“No, you never do.  That’s the worst of a woman like you marrying a man like me.”

They discussed devices.  One servant fewer.  No holiday.  Cinemas instead of theatres.  No books.  No cigarettes.  No taxis.  No clothes.  No meat.  No telephone.  No friends.  They reached no conclusion.  Eve referred to Adam’s great Treasury mind.  Adam said that his great Treasury mind should function on the problem during the day, and further that the problem must be solved that very night.

“I’ll tell you one thing I shall do,” said Mrs. Prohack in a decided tone as Mr. Prohack left the table.  “I shall countermand Sissie’a new frock.”

“If you do I shall divorce you,” was the reply.

“But why?”

Mr. Prohack answered: 

“In 1917 I saw that girl in dirty overalls driving a thundering great van down Whitehall.  Yesterday I met her in her foolish high heels and her shocking openwork stockings and her negligible dress and her exposed throat and her fur stole, and she was so delicious and so absurd and so futile and so sure of her power that—­that—­well, you aren’t going to countermand any new frock.  That chit has the right to ruin me—­not because of anything she’s done, but because she is.  I am ready to commit peccadilloes, but not crimes.  Good morning, my dove.”

And at the door, discreetly hiding her Chinese raiment behind the door, Eve said, as if she had only just thought of it, though she had been thinking of it for quite a quarter of an hour: