CHARLIE

I


When Mr. Prohack, in his mature but still rich velvet jacket, came down
to dinner, he found his son Charlie leaning against the mantelpiece in a
new dark brown suit, and studying _The Owner-Driver_. Charlie seemed
never to read anything but motor-car and light-car and side-car and
motor-bicycle periodical literature; but he read it conscientiously,
indefatigably, and completely--advertisements and all. He read it as
though it were an endless novel of passion and he an idle woman deprived
of the society her heart longed for. He possessed a motor-bicycle which
he stabled in a mews behind the Square. He had possessed several such
machines; he bought, altered, and sold them, apparently always with
profit to himself. He had no interest in non-mechanical literature or in
any of the arts.

"Your mother's gone to bed with a headache," said Mr. Prohack, with a
fair imitation of melancholy.

"Oh!" said the young man apathetically. His face had a wearied,
disillusioned expression.

"Is this the latest?" asked his father, indicating the new brown suit.
"My respectful congratulations. Very smart, especially at the waist."

For a youth who had nothing in the world but what remained of his wound
gratuity and other trifling military emoluments, and what he made out of