Mr. Prohack

"Ah! So I've caught you!" said his wife, coming brightly into the room. She was a buxom woman offorty-three. Her black hair was elaborately done for the day, but she wore a roomy peignoir insteadof a frock; it was Chinese, in the Imperial yellow, inconceivably embroidered with flora, fauna, andgrotesques. She always thus visited her husband at breakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, andproving to him that her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being and the satisfaction...
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"Ah! So I've caught you!" said his wife, coming brightly into the room. She was a buxom woman offorty-three. Her black hair was elaborately done for the day, but she wore a roomy peignoir insteadof a frock; it was Chinese, in the Imperial yellow, inconceivably embroidered with flora, fauna, andgrotesques. She always thus visited her husband at breakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, andproving to him that her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being and the satisfaction of hiscapricious tastes."Many years ago," said Mr. Prohack."You make a fuss about buying The Daily Picture for me. You say it humiliates you to see it in thehouse, and I don't know what. But I catch you reading it yourself, and before you've opened TheTimes! Dear, dear! That bacon's a cinder and I daren't say anything to her.""Lady," replied Mr. Prohack, "we all have something base in our natures. Sin springs fromopportunity. I cannot resist the damned paper." And he stuck his fork into the fair frock-coat of afatuous bridegroom coming out of church."My fault again!" the wife remarked brightly.The husband changed the subject:"I suppose that your son and daughter are still asleep?""Well, dearest, you know that they were both at that dance last night.""They ought not to have been. The popular idea that life is a shimmy is a dangerous illusion." Mr.Prohack felt the epigram to be third-rate, but he carried it off lightly."Sissie only went because Charlie wanted to go, and all I can say is that it's a nice thing if Charlieisn't to be allowed to enjoy himself now the war's over--after all he's been through.""You're mixing up two quite different things. I bet that if Charlie committed murder you'd go intothe witness-box and tell the judge he'd been wounded twice and won the Military Cross."