"No! But I mean I've had two baths. One in water and the other in resignation."
"How dull!"
"I've been thinking about the arrangements for the wedding," Eve started in a new, falsely careless tone, ignoring the badinage between her husband and daughter, which she always privately regarded as tedious.
There it was! They had come to worry him about the wedding. He had not recovered from one social martyrdom before they were plotting to push him into another. They were implacable, insatiable, were his women. He got up and walked about.
"Now, dad," Sissie addressed him. "Don't pretend you aren't interested." And then she burst into the most extraordinary laughter—laughter that bordered on the hysterical—and twirled herself round on the shod foot. Her behaviour offended Eve.
"Of course if you're going on like that, Sissie, I warn you I shall give it all up. After all, it won't be my wedding."
Sissie clasped her mother's neck.
"Don't be foolish, you silly old mater. It's a wedding, not a funeral."
"Well, what about it?" asked Mr. Prohack, sniffing with pleasure the new atmosphere created in his magnificent study by these feminine contacts.
"Do you think we'd better have the wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square, or at St. Nicodemus's?"