"So did I."

Machin, the house-parlourmaid, then intervened:

"Miss Sissie had a telephone call, and she's gone out, sir."

"Where to?"

"She didn't say, sir. She only said she wouldn't be in for dinner, sir.
I made sure she'd told you herself, sir."

The two men, by means of their eyes, transmitted to each other a
unanimous judgment upon the whole female sex, and sat down to dine alone
in the stricken house. The dinner was extremely frugal, this being the
opening day of Mrs. Prohack's new era of intensive economy, but the
obvious pleasure of Machin in serving only men brightened up somewhat
its brief course. Charlie was taciturn and curt, though not impolite.
Mr. Prohack, whose private high spirits not even the amazing and
inexcusable absence of his daughter could impair, pretended to a decent
woe, and chatted as he might have done to a fellow-clubman on a wet
Sunday night at the Club.

At the end of the meal Charlie produced the enormous widow's cruse which
he called his cigarette-case and offered his father a cigarette.

"Doing anything to-night?" asked Mr. Prohack, puffing.

"No," answered desperately Charlie, puffing.