"Dad," said she, "you're the most wonderful dad that ever was. Oh! If everybody would talk like that!"
"Not at all! Not at all!" he deprecated, delighted with himself and her. "I'm simply telling you what you know already. I needn't say any more. You'll do exactly as you think best, and whatever you do will please me. I don't want you to be happy in my way—I want you to be happy in your own way. Possibly you'll decide to tell Mr. Morfey to wait for three months."
"I most decidedly shall, dad," Sissie interrupted him, "and I'm most frightfully obliged to you."
He had always held that she was a marvellous girl, and here was the proof. He had spoken with the perfection of tact and sympathy and wisdom, but his success astonished him. At this point he perceived that Sissie was not really sitting in the chair at all and that the chair was empty. So that the exhibition of sagacity had been entirely wasted.
"Anyhow I've had a sleep," said the philosopher in him.
The door opened. Machin appeared, defying her mistress's orders.
"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but a Mr. Morfey is on the telephone and asks whether it would be convenient for you to see him to-night. He says it's urgent." Mr. Prohack braced himself, but where his stomach had been there was a void.
V
"Had an accident to your eye-glass?" asked Mr. Prohack, shaking hands with Oswald Morfey, when the latter entered, by appointment, Mr. Prohack's breakfast-room after dinner. Miss Warburton having gone home, Mr. Prohack had determined to employ her official room for formal interviews. With her woman's touch she had given it an air of business which pleasantly reminded him of the Treasury.
Ozzie was not wearing an eye-glass, and the absence of the broad black ribbon that usually ran like a cable-connection between his eye and his supra-umbilical region produced the disturbing illusion that he had forgotten an essential article of attire.