"Oh! Of course!" Charlie burst out. "You can't tell me anything I don't know already. I'm a pirate. I'm not producing. All the money I make has to be earned by somebody else before I get hold of it. I'm not doing any good to my beautiful country. But I did try to find a useful job, didn't I? My beautiful country wouldn't have me. It only wanted me in the trenches. Well, it's got to have me. I'll jolly well make it pay now. I'll squeeze every penny out of it. I'll teach it a lesson. And why not? I shall only be shoving its own ideas down its throat. Supposing I hadn't got this knack and I hadn't had _you_. I might have been wearing all my ribbons and playing a barrel organ in Oxford Street to-day instead of living at the Grand Babylon."
"You're becoming quite eloquent in your old age," said Mr. Prohack, tremulously jocular while looking with alarm into his paternal heart. Was not he himself a pirate? Had not the hundred and fifty thousand that was coming to him had to be earned by somebody else? Money did not make itself.
"Well," retorted Charlie, with a grim smile. "There's one thing to be said for me. When I _do_ talk, I talk."
"I'm not going to be the ordinary millionaire. No fear! Make your mind easy on that point. Besides, reading isn't so bad after all."
"And what about that house you were speaking of? You aren't going to plant any of your options on me."
"We'll discuss that to-morrow. I must get back to my seat," said Charlie firmly, moving away. "So long."
"I say," Mr. Prohack summoned him to return. "I'm rather curious about the methods of you millionaires. Just when did you sign that cheque for me? You only lent me the money as we were leaving the hotel."
"I made it out while I was talking to the mater and Sis in your box, of course."
"How simple are the acts of genius--after they're accomplished!" observed Mr. Prohack. "Naturally you signed it in the box."
As he rejoined his family he yawned, surprising himself. He began to feel a mysterious fatigue. The effect of the Turkish bath, without doubt! The remainder of the evening stretched out in front of him, interminably tedious. The title of the play was misleading. He could not smack his face. He wished to heaven he could.... And then, after the play, the ball! Eliza might tell him to dance with her. She would be quite capable of such a deed. And by universal convention her suggestions were the equivalent of demands. Nobody ever could or would refuse to dance with Eliza.... There she was, all her four limbs superbly displayed, sweetly smiling with her enormous mouth, just as if the relations between Blaggs and herself were those of Paul and Virginia. The excited audience, in the professional phrase, was "eating" her.