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Mr. Prohack by Arnold Bennett
page 220 of 489 (44%)

Mr. Prohack strove to conceal his own painful lack of worldliness. He
had imagined that he had in his pockets heaps of money to pay for a meal
for a handful of people. He was mistaken; that was all, and the incident
had no importance, for a few pounds more or less could not matter in the
least to a gentleman of his income. Yet he felt guilty of being a
waster. He could not accustom himself to the scale of expenditure.
Barely in the old days could he have earned in a week the price of the
repast consumed now in an hour. The vast apartment was packed with
people living at just that rate of expenditure and seeming to think
naught of it. "But do two wrongs make a right?" he privately demanded of
his soul. Then his soul came to the rescue with its robust commonsense
and replied:

"Perhaps two wrongs don't make a right, but five hundred wrongs
positively must make a right." And he felt better.

And suddenly he understood the true function of the magnificent
orchestra that dominated the scene. It was the function of a brass band
at a quack-dentist's booth in a fair,--to drown the cries of the victims
of the art of extraction.

"Yes," he reflected, full of health and carelessness. "This is a truly
great life."

The party went off in two automobiles, his own and Lady Massulam's.
Cars were fighting for room in front of the blazing façade of the
Metropolitan Theatre, across which rose in fire the title of the
entertainment, _Smack Your Face_, together with the names of Asprey
Chown and Eliza Fiddle. Car after car poured out a contingent of
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