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THE NEW POOR - Mr. Prohack
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"That's ridiculous. Why should you feel ashamed?"
"Well, I'm like that."
"You're revelling in your own virtuousness, my girl. Now in last week's _Economist_ it said that the Index Number of commodity prices had slightly fallen these last few weeks."
"I don't know anything about indexes and the _Economist_," Eve retorted. "But I know what coffee is a pound, and I know what the tradesmen's books are--"
At this point she cried without warning.
"No," murmured Mr. Prohack, soothingly, caressingly. "You mustn't baptise me. I couldn't bear it." And he kissed her eyes.
III
"I _know_ we can't afford any more for housekeeping," she whispered, sniffing damply. "And I'm ashamed I can't manage, and I knew I should make you unhappy. What with idle and greedy working-men, and all these profiteers...! It's a shame!"
"Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "It's what our Charlie fought for, and got wounded twice for, and won the M.C. for. That's what it is. But you see we're the famous salaried middle-class that you read so much about in the papers, and we're going through the famous process of being crushed between the famous upper and nether millstones. Those millstones have been approaching each other--and us--for some time. Now they've begun to nip. That funny feeling in your inside that's causing you still to baptise me, in spite of my protest--that's the first real nip."
She caught her breath.
"Arthur," she said. "If you go on like that I shall scream."
"Do," Mr. Prohack encouraged her. "But of course not too loud. At the same time don't forget that I'm a humourist. Humourists make jokes when they're happy, and when they're unhappy they make jokes."
"But it's horribly serious."
"Horribly."
Mrs. Prohack slipped off the arm of the chair. Her body seemed to vibrate within the Chinese gown, and she effervesced into an ascending and descending series of sustained laughs.
"That's hysteria," said Mr. Prohack. "And if you don't stop I shall be reluctantly compelled to throw the coffee over you. Water would be better, but there is none."
Then Eve ceased suddenly.
"To think," she remarked with calmness, "that you're called the Terror of the Departments, and you're a great authority on finance, and you've been in the Government service for nearly twenty-five years, and always done your duty--"
"Child," Mr. Prohack interrupted her. "Don't tell me what I know. And try not to be surprised at any earthly phenomena. There are people who are always being astonished by the most familiar things. They live on earth as if they'd just dropped from Mars on to a poor foreign planet. It's not a sign of commonsense. You've lived on earth now for--shall we say?--some twenty-nine or thirty years, and if you don't know the place you ought to. I assure you that there is nothing at all unusual in our case. We are perfectly innocent; we are even praiseworthy; and yet--we shall have to suffer. It's quite a common case. You've read of thousands and millions of such cases; you've heard of lots personally; and you've actually met a few. Well, now, you yourself _are_ a case. That's all." 
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