"I'm going to fetch my daughter."

"Excellent. But have something before you go. You may not know it, but
you have been using up nervous tissue, which has to be replaced."

As he was driving down to Putney in a taxi, Mr. Prohack certainly did
feel very tired. But he was not so tired as not to insist on helping the
engine of the taxi. He pushed the taxi forward with all his might all
the way to Putney. He pushed it till his arms ached, though his hands
were in his pockets. The distance to Putney had incomprehensibly
stretched to nine hundred and ninety-nine miles.

He found Sissie in the studio giving a private lesson to a middle-aged
gentleman who ought, Mr. Prohack considered, to have been thinking of
his latter end rather than of dancing. He broke up the lesson very
abruptly.

"Your mother has had a motor accident. You must come at once."

Sissie came.

"Then it must have been about here," said she, as the taxi approached
Putney Bridge on the return journey.

So it must. He certainly had not thought of the _locus_ of the accident.
He had merely pictured it, in his own mind, according to his own
frightened fancy. Yes, it must have been just about there. And yet there
was no sign of it in the roadway. Carthew must have had the wounded
Eagle removed. Mr. Prohack sat stern and silent. A wondrous woman, his