port? I'll have some."
"So that you're short of fifty pounds?" said Mr. Prohack, obediently pouring out the port—but only half a glass. "Well, I might be able to let you have fifty pounds myself, if you would deign to accept it."
Sissie cried compassionately: "But you haven't got a cent, dad!"
"Oh! Haven't I? Did your mother tell you that?"
"Well, she didn't exactly say so."
"I should hope not! And allow me to inform you, my girl, that in accusing me of not having a cent you're being guilty of the worst possible taste. Children should always assume that their fathers have mysterious stores of money, and that nothing is beyond their resources, and if they don't rise to every demand it's only because in their inscrutable wisdom they deem it better not to. Or it may be from mere cussedness."
"Yes," said Sissie. "That's what I used to think when I was young. But I've looked up your salary in Whitaker's Almanac."
"It was very improper of you. However, nothing is secret in these days, and so I don't mind telling you that I've backed a winner to-day—not to-day, but some little time since—and I can if necessary and agreeable let you have fifty pounds."
Mr. Prohack as it were shook his crest in plenary contentment. He had the same sensation of creativeness as he had had a while earlier with his son—a godlike sensation. And he was delighted with his girl. She was so young and so old. And her efforts to play the woman of the world with him were so comic and so touching. Only two or three years since she had been driving a motor-van in order to defeat the Germans. She had received twenty-eight shillings a week for six days of from twelve to fourteen hours. She would leave the house at eight and come back at eight, nine, or ten. And on her return, pale enough, she would laugh and say she had had her dinner and would go to bed. But she had not had her dinner. She was simply too tired and nervously exasperated to eat. And she would lie in bed and tremble and cry quietly from fatigue. She did not know that her parents knew these details. The cook, her confidante, had told them, much later. And Mr. Prohack had decreed that Sissie must never know that they knew. She had stuck to the task during a whole winter, skidding on glassy asphalt, slimy wood, and slithery stone-setts in the East End, and had met with but one accident, a minor affair. The experience seemed to have had no permanent effect on her, but it had had a permanent effect on her father's attitude towards her—her mother had always strongly objected to what she called the "episode," had shown only relief when it concluded, and had awarded no merit for it.
"Can you definitely promise me fifty pounds, dad?" Sissie asked quietly.
Mr. Prohack made no articulate answer. His reply was to take out his cheque-book and his fountain-pen and fill in a cheque to Miss Sissie Prohack or order. He saw no just reason for differentiating between the sexes in his offspring. He had given a cheque to Charlie; he gave one to Sissie.
"Then you aren't absolutely stone-broke," said Sissie, smiling.
"I should not so describe myself."
"It's just like mother," she murmured, the smile fading.
Mr. Prohack raised a sternly deprecating hand. "Enough."
"But don't you want to know what I want the money for?" Sissie demanded.
"No! … Ha-ha!"
"Then I shall tell you. The fact is I must tell you."
III
"I've decided to teach dancing," said Sissie, beginning again nervously, as her father kept a notable silence.
"I thought you weren't so very keen on dancing."
"I'm not; but perhaps that's because I don't care much for the new fashion of dancing a whole evening with the same man. Still the point is that I'm a very fine dancer. Even Charlie will tell you that."
"But I thought that all the principal streets in London were full of dancing academies at the present time, chiefly for the instruction of aged gentlemen."
"I don't know anything about that," Sissie replied seriously. "What I do know is that now I can find a hundred pounds, I have a ripping chance of taking over a studio—at least part of one; and it's got quite a big connection already—in fact pupils are being turned away."
"And this is all you can think of!" protested Mr. Prohack with melancholy. "We are living on the edge of a volcano—the country is, I mean—and your share in the country's work is to teach the citizens to dance!"
"Well," said Sissie. "They'll dance anyhow, and so they may as well learn to dance properly. And what else can I do? Have you had me taught to do anything else? You and mother have brought me up to be perfectly useless except as the wife of a rich man. That's what you've done, and you can't deny it."
"Once," said Mr. Prohack. "You very nobly drove a van."
"Yes, I did. But no thanks to you and mother. Why, I had even to learn to drive in secret, lest you should stop me! And I can tell you one thing—if I was to start driving a van now I should probably get mobbed in the streets. All the men have a horrid grudge against us girls who did their work in the war. If we want to get a job in these days we jolly well have to conceal the fact that we were in the W.A.A.C. or in anything at all during the war. They won't look at us if they find out that. Our reward! However, I don't want to drive a van. I want to teach dancing. It's not so dirty and it pays better. And if people feel like dancing, why shouldn't they dance? Come now, dad, be reasonable."
"That's asking a lot from any human being, and especially from a parent."
"Well, have you got any argument against what I say?"
"I prefer not to argue."
"That's because you can't."
"It is. It is. But what is this wonderful chance you've got?"
"It's that studio where Charlie and I went last night, at Putney."
"At Putney?"
"Well, why not Putney? They have a gala night every other week, you know. It belongs to Viola Ridle. Viola's going to get married and live in Edinburgh, and she's selling it. And Eliza asked me if I'd join her in taking it over. Eliza telephoned me about it to-night, and so I rushed across the Park to see her. But Viola's asking a hundred pounds premium and a hundred for the fittings, and very cheap it is too. In fact Viola's a fool, I think, but then she's fond of Eliza."
"Now, Eliza? Is that Eliza Brating, or am I getting mixed up?"
"Yes, it's Eliza Brating."
"Ah!"
"You needn't be so stuffy, dad, because her father's only a second-division clerk at the Treasury."
"Oh, I'm not. It was only this morning that I was saying to Mr. Hunter that we must always remember that second-division clerks are also God's creatures."
"Father, you're disgusting."
"Don't
