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There's been some trouble between Mimi and me this afternoon, and I'm hoping that you'll straighten it out for me." "Ah!" Mr. Prohack's interest became suddenly intense and pleasurable. "The silly girl's given me notice. She's fearfully hurt because you told her that I told you about the church-clock affair, after it had been agreed between her and me that we wouldn't let on to anybody at all.
Astounding carelessness on the part of the caretaker! Mr. Prohack's subconscious legs carried him into the house. The interior was amazing. Mr. Prohack had always been interested, not only in pictures, but in furniture. Pictures and furniture might have been called the weakness to which his circumstances had hitherto compelled him to be too strong to yield.
Prohack's nerves reached the point at which he could tolerate the tragic spectacle no more, and he burst out vulgarly, in a man-in-the-street vein, chopping off the brilliant conversation as with a chopper: "Now, Miss Fancy, tell us something about yourself." The common-sounding phrase seemed to be a magic formula endowed with the power to break an awful spell.
The affair was his chief business, and he had come to it in a great car whose six cylinders were working harmoniously for nothing else, and with the aid of an intelligent and experienced and expert human being whose sole object in life that morning was to preside over Mr. Prohack's locomotion to and from the tailors'! Mr.
Prohack blushed and hated himself for blushing. The second was quite simply enraptured and didn't care who knew it. "Dr. Veiga," Eve appealed, clinging to Mr. Prohack's coat. "It is my husband who needs looking after. He is not making any progress, and it is my fault. And let me tell you that you've been neglecting him for me."
The shadow of a menacing calamity had passed, and everybody's spirits, except Mr. Prohack's, reacted to the news; Machin, restored to duty, was gaiety itself; but Mr. Prohack, unresponsive, kept on absurdly questioning his soul and the universe: "What am I getting out of life?
Prohack desired in the way of stuffs and patterns, he led Mr. Prohack mysteriously to a small chamber, and a scribe followed them carrying pencil and paper, and Mr. Prohack removed, with assistance, his shabby coat and his waistcoat, and Mr. Melchizidek measured him in unexampled detail and precision, and the scribe, writing, intoned aloud all Mr. Prohack's dimensions. And all the time Mr.
Prohack's reaction to this piece of more-than-midnight news was to break into hearty and healthy laughter; he appeared to be genuinely diverted; and when Eve protested against such an attitude he said: "My child, anything that strikes you as funny after being wakened up at two o'clock in the morning is very funny, very funny indeed. How can I help laughing?" Eve thereupon began to cry, weakly.
But he had forgotten braces, as to which he surrendered unconditionally to the frock-coated judge. He brooked the most astounding braces, for none but Eve would see them, and he could intimidate Eve. "Shall we make you a quarter of a dozen pairs to measure, sir?" This extraordinary question miraculously restored all Mr. Prohack's vanished aplomb.
There must be quite a few others in the same fix as me in London, dying because rectors and other clergymen and officials insist on telling them the time all through the night. But they suffer in silence as I do. As I do, they see the uselessness of a fuss." "You will get used to it, Arthur," said Sir Paul indulgently but not unironically, at the end of Mr. Prohack's disquisition.
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