On awaking next morning Dorothy's first thought was how would her father's coming affect her relations with Sir Tancred; and she at once changed it to how would it affect her relations with the whole of the little circle into which a fortunate whim had led her. She was an honest soul, and now she tried to be as honest with herself as a woman can bring herself to be. She did not hide from herself that of late she and Sir Tancred had been more and more drawn together; she even went to the length of admitting that her feeling for him was something stronger than friendship. Indeed, she was full of pity for him. She had learned from Tinker something of the story of his earlier life, and like a good woman she wished she might give him the happiness he had missed. She did not know how strongly she longed to give him that happiness, much less was she able to distinguish where pity merged into love. Now she was in a great dread of her father's millions. She knew well enough that with many, indeed, with most men of Sir Tancred's class they would have been primroses, very large primroses, on the path of love; she feared that if he was the man she thought him, and she would not have him any other, they would prove barriers on that path, hard indeed to surmount. She dressed in no very good spirits, and came downstairs to find her father awaiting her in the hall, ready to stroll out and hear how the world had gone with her.
Sir Tancred also awoke with the sense of something unpleasant having happened. But at first he could not for the life of him remember what it was. Then he began to consider the change which would be brought about by the irruption of the millionaire. He resented it. He found the prospect of Tinker's losing Dorothy's services exceedingly disagreeable. For a while he ascribed that resentment to the fact that she would cease to be the excellent influence with Tinker she certainly was; and then he grew resentful on his own account. It was hard, indeed, that he should suddenly be deprived of the presence of so charming a creature at his table, of so delightful a companion of his evening stroll in the gardens of the Casino. If it hadn't been for those confounded millions—there he checked himself sternly; the millions were there, and there was no more to be said, or thought. But his temper was none the better for the constraint.
After his late hours the night before, Tinker did not get up as early as usual, and he and Elsie decided to forego their bathe in the sea, but went straight to breakfast in the kitchen of the hotel. He found the staff greatly concerned about the trouble which was likely to befall him for borrowing the motor-car. It seemed that on finding it gone, its owner, a M. Cognier, had displayed a wrath of the most terrible. Of course an Argus-eyed busy-body had seen Tinker depart in it; and M. Cognier, an Anglophobe, had declared his intention of punishing this insolence of Perfidious Albion by handing him over to the police. Tinker heard all their prophecies of evil with his wonted tranquillity; but he had no little difficulty in setting their minds at rest.
M. Cognier had been impressive.
The two children had finished their breakfast, and were about to set out in search of adventure, when Selina found them and began to set forth a petition. She wished to be allowed to enter Tinker's service again. She was, she said, alone in the world once more, for her husband, having spent all her savings, had with determined Scotch thriftiness incontinently died, and left her to shift for herself. She had been making a mean living as an ironer in a Parisian laundry, when Alexander McNeill had sent for her to Apricale to help him deliver a young lady from the Jesuits; and she saw in her curious meeting with Tinker, at the country seat of the young Monteleone, the finger of Providence pointing the way back to her old situation. Would he lay the matter before his father, and support her petition?
Tinker was somewhat taken aback, and said, "But I'm too old for a nurse."
"Oh, there are lots of things I could do, Master Tinker. There are really," said Selina. "You want a housekeeper when you're at the Refuge, a housekeeper who could get up your linen and Sir Tancred's as they can't do it at Farndon-Pryze. You want someone to look after you, when you've got a cold. You never did take any care of yourself." She was wringing her hands in her earnestness.
"You'd be a sort of valet-housekeeper then," said Tinker, pondering the matter.
"Yes, and I should want very little wages. All I want is to be in your service again. I never ought to have left it. I never had no real peace all the time I was married, what with wondering how you were being looked after, and whether you was ill or not. I always took inThe Morning Post, though Angus did grumble at the expense, all the time I was in Paris, on purpose to see where you was; and every day I looked at the Births, Deaths, and Marriages first, to see if anything had happened to you."
She stopped; and Tinker was silent a while, thinking; then he said, "Do you think you could act as maid to Elsie?"
"Why, of course I could, Master Tinker!"
"She wants someone to brush her hair most," said Tinker thoughtfully.
"I don't want a maid. And I don't want anyone to brush my hair but you," said Elsie firmly. "No one could do it so well."
"Oh, you'll soon get used to Selina's doing it," said Tinker cheerfully. "And you'll find it so much more—so much more important having a maid of your own. You'll feel so grown-up, don't you know? I tell you what, we'll go upstairs, and Selina can have a try at it, while I talk to my father."
Elsie shook her head doubtfully; but she came. Tinker left them at the door of Elsie's room, and went to his father. He found him dressing, and after bidding him good-morning, came at once to the matter in hand. "Selina wants to come back to us," he said. "She thinks she could be useful as valet-housekeeper and maid to Elsie. She's awfully keen on it."
"If she wants to come back, she most certainly can," said Sir Tancred. "I owe Selina a debt I can never pay—and so do you, for that matter. I don't pretend to know what the functions of a valet-housekeeper are, but doubtless Selina knows her own capabilities best. Besides, as you are losing your governess, you will want some woman about Elsie."
"But I don't intend to lose my governess!" cried Tinker.
Sir Tancred looked at him with unaffected interest. "Am I to understand that you propose to retain the daughter of a millionaire as your adopted sister's governess?" he said.
"Yes," said Tinker firmly. "Dorothy's a very good governess: she suits Elsie and she suits me."
"That sounds like a reason," said Sir Tancred. "But I shall be interested to see if Mr. Rainer listens to it."
"I think," said Tinker thoughtfully, "we shan't have much trouble with Mr. Rainer."
"Of course, if you've made up your mind—but millionaires are kittle cattle."
Tinker went to Selina and Elsie, looked carefully into the matter of hair-brushing; gave Selina a few hints on the process, and then told her that her request was granted. He fled from the room to escape her joyful gratitude; and went down into the hall to await the conclusion of the process, and Elsie's coming.
Of a sudden there descended on him an exceedingly animated French gentleman of forty, who cried, "Tell me then a little, good-for-nothing! Why did you steal my motor-car yesterday?"
Tinker was suavity itself; he protested that he was desolated, grieved beyond measure that the necessity of borrowing the motor-car had been forced on him; but he had borrowed it in the service of a lady; and he told briefly the story of the kidnapping. The aggrieved Frenchman listened to it with a face in which amazement battled with incredulity; but fortunately, towards the end of it, Dorothy and her father came into the hotel from walking in the garden of the Casino; and Tinker introduced the Frenchman to them. At the sight of Dorothy's beauty, he forgot his righteous wrath; forgot that it was an international matter, another instance of the cunning insolence of Perfidious Albion; protested his delight that his car should have been of use to her; would not listen to Septimus Rainer's proposal to fit it out with fresh tires, declaring that the tires on it, worn in her service, had become one of his most cherished possessions; and in the end turned upon Tinker with outstretched arms, and cried, "Embrace me! I have called you a good-for-nothing! But you are a hero!"
With infinite quickness Tinker seized the nearest hand, wrung it warmly, and ducked out of the way of the embrace. Then he explained that unless the police caught the kidnappers, they desired to let the matter drop, for the gossip would be unpleasant to Dorothy. The Frenchman understood; and assured them that as far as he was concerned, it should be buried in the most secret depths of his bosom.
With that he took his leave of them; and on his heels came two Italian detectives to inquire into the kidnapping. Sir Tancred was summoned to the conference; and for all that their questioners assumed a good deal of the air of inquisitors with all the horrors of the torture-chamber behind them, he and Tinker saw to it that they went away very little wiser than they came.
At déjeuner Septimus Rainer told them that now he was in Europe he proposed to stay in Europe, and enjoy a little of his daughter's society. He could carry on all of his business he wanted to by cablegram and letter. One thing, however, he must have, and that was clothes, for in his haste he had come away with a gripsack and nothing more. Sir Tancred suggested that Tinker, who knew his Nice, should take him over there, and put him in the hands of the right tailor, hatter, hosier, and bootmaker; and Septimus Rainer accepted the offer gratefully.
Accordingly the two of them caught a train early in the afternoon, and went to Nice. Septimus Rainer had supposed the getting of clothes to be a simple and tiresome affair of a few minutes; you went to a tailor and said, "Make me suits of clothes," or to a bootmaker and said, "Make me pairs of boots." He was vastly mistaken. He found himself embarked upon a serious business.
He awoke to the seriousness of it in the train, when he found Tinker, who had taken his commission to heart, regarding him with a cold, calculating air, very disquieting. He endured it as long as he could, then he said cautiously, "You aren't measuring me for my coffin; are you, sonny?"
"Oh, no!" said Tinker with a reassuring smile of a seraphic sweetness. "I was only thinking how you ought to be dressed."
"Oh, anything will do for me," said Septimus Rainer carelessly.
"I'm afraid not; you see I'm responsible," said Tinker seriously. "And I was thinking that, getting your clothes here in Nice, I shall have to keep a very sharp eye on them, or they'll go dressing you like a French American—you know, an American who is dressed by a Paris tailor. And that wouldn't do at all."
"No: of course not," said Septimus Rainer quickly.
But it was not till they came to the tailor's that he realised the full seriousness of the business before them. At first he supposed that he was to have his say in the matter; but at the end of ten minutes, with a half-humorous abandonment, he put himself entirely in the hands of the conscientious Tinker, and indeed had he not done so, there is no saying that he might not have gone about the world parading a velvet collar on a grey frock coat. It was Tinker who decided, after weighty consideration, upon the colour and texture of the stuff of each suit, chose the very buttons for it, and forced upon the reluctant Niçois his ideas of the way each separate garment should be cut. Septimus Rainer was frankly bewildered at the end of half an hour; he was used, in the way of business, to carrying a multiplicity of details in his head, but these details it could not carry. When he found that Tinker had them at his finger ends, he was filled with admiration and respect.
From the tailor's they went to the hatter's; and there Septimus Rainer found himself trying on hats by the score. But, strangely enough, he did not grow weary: Tinker's absorbed interest in his task was catching to the point that at the hosier's the millionaire found himself discussing the shade of his socks with real enthusiasm.
When they came out of the last shop Tinker said, with the deep breath of one relieved of a heavy responsibility, "There—I think you'll look all right—as far as a French tailor can do it."
"I ought to, after all the trouble you've taken, sonny," said Septimus Rainer, smiling.
"You have to take trouble about dressing a man. A woman is easy enough. I got Elsie her clothes in about an hour. But a man is much more difficult. And clothes are so important," said Tinker gravely.
"I suppose they are—over here," said Septimus Rainer.
"I'm glad you don't take them really seriously," said Tinker, approving his tone, "because you'll soon get into the way of wearing them when you've got them. It's very funny, but well-dressed Americans—men, I mean—don't often wear their clothes properly; they look as if they felt so awfully well-dressed. I don't think you will."
"Now you've told me about it, I'll try not to."
"I think you'll want a good man, though, to keep you up to the mark. You might get slack, don't you know?"
"No, no; I can't have a valet, and I won't," said Septimus Rainer firmly.
"Ah, we shall have to see what Dorothy says about that," said Tinker with a smile of doubtful meaning.
"That's playing it rather low down on me, isn't it?" said Septimus Rainer reproachfully. "It's—it's coercion."
"Oh, if you have to wear clothes, you may as well do it thoroughly. You see, it's been put into my hands, and I must go through with it," said Tinker apologetically.
The millionaire gazed at him ruefully.
"And now," Tinker went on, regarding him with another cold, calculating air, that of a proprietor, "I think I'll take you to a hair-dresser, and have your hair and beard dealt with."
"Crop away! crop away!" said the millionaire.
Tinker took him to a hair-dresser, and told the man exactly how he wanted the hair and beard cut. "He'd make you a French American, too, if I let him," he said to Septimus Rainer.
When the hair-dresser had done, the millionaire looked at himself in the glass with approval, and said, "Well, I do look spick and span, though gritty; yes—sir."
"You'll look better when you have your clothes," said Tinker. "And, now, I think you must want a drink."
"That is so, sonny. This is dry work, this getting clothes."
Tinker took him to a café, adorned with an American bar. Septimus Rainer lighted a cigar and refreshed himself with the whiskey sour of his native land; Tinker ate ices. Over these agreeable occupations they talked; and the millionaire derived considerable entertainment and no little instruction from his young companion's views of life on the Mediterranean littoral, illustrated from the passing pleasure-seekers.
Over these agreeable occupations they talked.[Illustration: Over these agreeable occupations they talked.]
Over these agreeable occupations they talked.[Illustration: Over these agreeable occupations they talked.]
When they got into the railway carriage on their return, he lighted another cigar, and lay back in the seat with the content of a man who had done a hard day's work. But presently he roused himself and said, "I've been thinking about those kidnapping scum. They were going to ransom Dorothy for three hundred thousand dollars, you said."
"Yes, a million and a half francs," said Tinker.
"Well, sonny, I've been thinking I must pay you fifty thousand dollars over that business. You took a big risk holding up a gang like that."
"It wasn't me: Selina held them up," said Tinker quickly.
"Selina did her share, and I shan't forget it. But it was your show. I think fifty thousand dollars would be fair."
Tinker's face went very grave. "Thank you very much," he said slowly, "but I couldn't take any money for helping Dorothy out of a mess. When I've taken money for helping people, they've been strangers—like the Kernabies and Blumenruth. But Dorothy is different—quite different."
Septimus Rainer pulled at his beard, and said in a grumbling voice, "That's all very well, sonny; but where do I come in? You get my little girl out of a tight place—a very tight place—and you save me three hundred thousand dollars. Business is business, and I ought to pay."
"It is rather awkward for you," said Tinker, looking at him with a puzzled face and knitted brow. "But I think the thing is that it wasn't business. I like Dorothy—I like her very much. She's a friend. And there can't be any business between friends, don't you know?"
"Shake, sonny," said the millionaire, holding out his hand. "I'm glad you and she are friends."
Tinker shook his hand gravely.
When they came back to the hotel, at the sight of her father, Dorothy cried, "Oh, papa, what have you been doing? You look ten years younger. And what a nice shape your head is!"
"Yes," said Septimus Rainer, "I pride myself on the shape of my head. But it's all your young friend's doing."
"Wait till his clothes come," said Tinker with modest pride.
"I shall look fine in those clothes, I tell you—fine," said Septimus Rainer, and his air was almost fatuous.
"I think he ought to have a valet," said Tinker. "You can't learn about clothes all out of your own head. Either you must have always worn the right clothes, or you want someone to teach you."
"Of course, you must have a valet, papa," said Dorothy.
"I can't—I can't have a man messing about me," said Septimus Rainer in a tone of almost pathetic pleading.
"I'm afraid there's no way out of it," said Tinker firmly.
"I'm sure there isn't if Tinker says so. He knows all about these things," said Dorothy. "You must be brave, papa: you really must."
"I'll find him one," said Tinker.
Septimus Rainer yielded with a gesture of hopeless resignation.
Septimus Rainer was very soon admitted to the frankest intimacy of the little circle. An American of the best type, he had enjoyed the advantage in his childhood of the stern and hardening training of life on a little farm, and the supreme advantage of a good mother. He had fought his way to fortune with clean hands, winning always his battles by sheer superiority of brain, never by laxity of principle; no man could lay to his charge that he had dealt him a foul blow. He had come, therefore, through that demoralising fight with a clean heart, his native shrewdness increased a thousand-fold, his native simplicity unabated. It was this combination of shrewdness and simplicity which had caused him to send Dorothy, bitter as it had been to part with her, to Europe to finish her education. His gorge had risen at the intolerable snobbishness which is corroding the wealthy sections of American society; he had made up his mind that she had a better chance of obtaining the necessary social acquirements, while remaining a gentlewoman, in Europe; and had acted with great success on the conviction.
After a few days' natural restlessness he found himself developing an admirable capacity, very rare in millionaires, of being for a while idle. This agreeable circumstance was the natural effect of the surroundings in which he found himself; not so much of the place, for at Monte Carlo pleasure is a somewhat strenuous affair, but of the fact that his new friends had a trained power of taking life easily. Tinker, Sir Tancred, and Lord Crosland would have admitted him to their intimacy for the sake of Dorothy; but simple souls themselves, they recognised in him a kindred simplicity, and admitted him to their friendship. He possessed, to a great degree, the American adaptability; and it is not surprising that he fell into their way of taking life easily. It was only for the time being. The millionaire is a good deal of the Sindbad, and he must bear the burden and go the way of the golden Old Man of the Sea he has made for himself. But Septimus Rainer enjoyed this respite from the tyranny of his millions with the whole-hearted pleasure of a child. He enjoyed the brightness and glitter of the place; he enjoyed the pleasant meals and pleasant talks with pleasant companions; he enjoyed a little gambling at the tables; and he enjoyed with a childlike zest playing with Dorothy and the children, displaying latent and unsuspected talents for piracy, brigandage, and conspiracy, which were no less a glory than a surprise to him. Indeed, at times he was very like a young schoolboy let loose after many hours' school.
Tinker was of perpetual interest to him, and he listened with greedy ears to the wisdom of the world of that sage, on the rare occasions when some matter or other set it flowing from his lips. On the other hand, he found in him an absorbed listener to the stories of his less involved financial battles, and spared no pains to make them clear to him. Sir Tancred interested him little less, and he was always deploring the loss the splendid army of millionaires had suffered by his excellent abilities not having been forced to flow in a business channel.
He was distressed, too, about the waste of Tinker, and adjured his father to hand him over to him to be made a millionaire of.
But Sir Tancred turned a deaf ear to his petition, and said, "Of course, if Tinker went into business he would become a millionaire. And it's a fashionable occupation, and I've nothing to say against it. But over here, with some of us, there are still other things besides money—not that there will be long—and for my part I shall be content if he grows up a gentleman, as he will. Business might spoil that; and at any rate I won't chance it. And, after all, my step-mother won't live to much more than eighty, so that he will have thirty thousand a year before he's forty-five."
"That's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars," said Septimus Rainer thoughtfully, and he pressed the point no more.
He was far too shrewd not to perceive the attraction Sir Tancred and Dorothy had for one another, and he regarded it with entire content. Whatever he might have said against Sir Tancred's manner of life, he had a genuine respect for his qualities; and he had learned from Dorothy something of the causes of his falling into that manner of life. He had a strong belief that once married to her he would change; he thought it likely that he might even embark on the career of politics, which he understood to be, in England, a quite respectable pursuit. He was aware, of course, that he could easily buy her an English peer or a foreign Prince for husband. But Sir Tancred's rank and birth satisfied his simple tastes; and he was quite sure that he might ransack the English peerage and the Courts of Europe without finding her as good a husband. He did not perceive that his millions barred Sir Tancred's path.
Dorothy perceived it only too soon. She found the growth of her intimacy with Sir Tancred checked; it did not lessen, indeed, but it did not increase. A shadow had fallen across it, and he no longer talked to her in the tone of half-affectionate familiarity he had grown to use with her, he was more reserved. She chafed at it, but she was not greatly downcast; she only wished that the kidnappers had had the grace to leave her in her part of the penniless governess, a few weeks longer. She felt that, then, all the millions in the world would not have barred Sir Tancred's way. Indeed, she had no reason to be greatly downcast. This sudden setting of her out of his reach had inevitably increased her attraction for Sir Tancred; it had deepened his liking to a far stronger feeling. He cursed the unkindly Fates, and told himself that his only course was to fly; that the more he saw of her, the more painful would that flight be. But he could by no means constrain himself to forego the delight of her presence; and, though he never let a word of his love escape his lips, his eyes and the tones of his voice told her of it often enough.
Tinker was not long providing Septimus Rainer with a carefully chosen English valet, whom he found a pleasant, unassuming fellow, very easy to get on with. Then the millionaire began to talk of engaging a secretary, for his millions were beginning to make themselves troublesome; and he begged Tinker, since he had found him so unembarrassing a valet, to keep his eyes about him for a secretary also; but Tinker said that Monte Carlo was no place to find secretaries who understood business.
One morning he saw Madame Séraphine de Belle-Île drive up to the hotel. She wore a mournful air; and he perceived at once that she was no longer clad in a bright scarlet costume, but in one of a dull crimson, more in keeping with her air of mournfulness. She cut him deliberately as she passed into the hotel.
He was exceedingly angry; no human being had ever cut him before, and he flushed with mortification. He walked down to the gardens pondering the affront; and his anger grew. Then of a sudden it flashed on him that she had found out Mr. Arthur Courtnay, and that the warning he had given her had had something to do with that discovery. She had cut him by way of showing her gratitude in a truly womanly fashion. With the smile of an angel indulgent to human frailty he forgave her, and thrust the matter out of his mind.
That night at dinner, or rather at dessert, Lord Crosland informed them that he was engaged to Claire Wigram; and when they had done congratulating him, he told them that in a few days he would be leaving for England with the Wigrams.
"Well," said Sir Tancred, "the season here is coming to an end; and, at any rate, the weather for the last few days has been too hot to do these children any good. I think we will move northward, too."
"It will be the break-up of a very pleasant party," said Septimus Rainer with a sigh, and Dorothy's face fell.
"Why should it break up?" said Lord Crosland. "You'd better all come."
"No; I'm not coming to England, yet," said Sir Tancred. "After all this heat it would be too great a risk to face straight away the bitter English summer. I thought of moving northward gently to Biarritz, or I have a fancy for Arcachon. Wednesday would be as good a day as any."
There was a pause; then Tinker said thoughtfully, "Wednesday is rather soon, sir." And, turning to Dorothy, he said, "Do you think that you could pack by Wednesday? Of course, it doesn't really matter, for you could come on after us; but I don't want Elsie to lose a day's work."
Septimus Rainer, Sir Tancred, and Lord Crosland looked a little taken aback; it struck them all three with the same sense of oddness that a small boy should direct the movements of the daughter of a millionaire.
"Oh, I can easily pack up by Wednesday," said Dorothy, as if it were a matter of course that he should direct her movements.
"That's all right," said Tinker.
"But I don't understand," said Septimus Rainer. "Has Dorothy bound herself to do as you tell her?"
"Well, I suppose she has, as far as teaching Elsie goes. And I explained when she took the post that we travelled about a good deal," said Tinker carelessly.
"But I can't have this," said Septimus Rainer.
"Well, she can always give me a month's notice, and then the engagement ends," said Tinker. He was prepared for the discussion, and resolved that his father and Dorothy should not be separated as long as he could prevent it.
"Do you mean she isn't free for a month from now? But—but it's absurd!" said Septimus Rainer.
"That's what the papers call the rights of the employer," said Tinker with a singularly sad sweetness.
"Oh, you wouldn't insist on that right, not if you were asked nicely, would you?" said Lord Crosland.
"Oh, yes, I should!" said Tinker cheerfully. "You see, I'm responsible for Elsie, and she will never get such a good governess as Dorothy again. So she must have as much of her as possible."
"Thank you; it's nice to be appreciated," said Dorothy, smiling at him.
"Ah," said Septimus Rainer with the air of one who has found a solution of the problem, "but Dorothy can always forfeit a month's salary in lieu of notice."
"Oh, I couldn't think of it, papa!" cried Dorothy. "I should lose—I should lose five pounds!"
"This beats the Dutch! This is avarice! I allow you four thousand dollars a month!" said Septimus Rainer.
"Ah, but this is my own earned money!" Dorothy protested, flushing and smiling.
Suddenly there came a twinkle into Septimus Rainer's eye. "Well," he said, "if you're ground down under the heel of a grasping employer, you're ground down, and you must go to Arcachon. But I shall come, too."
"Of course," said Tinker. "You're—you're one of the family."
"Thank you," said Septimus Rainer. "I'm told that you English are slow about it. But when you make a man at home, you do make him at home. And I've always wanted to be adopted."
On the eve of their departure for Arcachon, Tinker and Elsie were sitting in the gardens of the Temple of Fortune, taking a well-earned rest after a farewell bolt into the Salles de Jeu, in which Elsie also had played a gallant and successful part, for the somewhat obscure reason that it was the last bolt: so strengthening to her character had been companionship with Tinker. She was receiving, with modest pride, his congratulations on having penetrated deeper than himself, to the innermost shrine, the Trente et Quarante table, in fact, when they saw coming towards them a large, majestic, white-haired lady, a small, subdued, mouse-haired lady, and a man of doubtful appearance.
Without causing him to pause in his congratulations, Tinker's active mind had placed the two women as a wealthy Englishwoman and her companion, and was hesitating whether to place the man in the class of Continental Guides or private detectives, when he pointed to the two children, and said something to the majestic lady.
"That's the little boy, is it? Then you two go and sit on the next seat while I talk to him," said the majestic lady in a voice which lost in pleasantness what it gained in loudness; and she came to the seat on which Tinker and Elsie sat, while her attendants walked on.
Now to call him a little boy was by no means the quickest way to Tinker's heart, and he watched her draw near with a cold eye. But all the same when she made as if to sit down, he rose and raised his hat with a charming smile. She sat down and looked him over with a cool consideration which provoked his fastidiousness to no admiration of her breeding. Then she said:
"Are you Sir Tancred Beauleigh's little boy?"
"I am Hildebrand Anne Beauleigh," said Tinker in a faintly corrective tone quite lost on her complacent mind.
"Hildebrand Anne! Hildebrand Anne! She called you Hildebrand Anne, did she? The impudence of these minxes!" said the majestic lady, and she sniffed like a lady of the lower-middle classes.
At once Tinker knew that she was Lady Beauleigh, and that she was speaking of his mother. But his face never changed; only the pupils of his eyes contracted a little; and he drew a quiet, deep breath of satisfaction. He had always hoped for an interview with her, his father's step-mother, and he knew that he had the advantage; for he was armed with a very fair knowledge of her, imparted to him by his father, who thought it well to put him on his guard; and of him she knew nothing.
"Who's this little girl?" said Lady Beauleigh, surveying Elsie with her insolent stare. "Send her away. I want to talk to you alone."
"This is my adopted sister, Elsie. You may talk before her; it doesn't matter how confidential it is. I always tell her everything," said Tinker in a tone of kindly but exasperating patronage.
"I don't care! Go away, little girl!" said Lady Beauleigh, and Tinker was pleased to see the colour rise in her cheeks.
He stayed Elsie, who was rising to go, with a wave of his hand and said gently, "Is it important talk?"
"Yes; it is!" snapped Lady Beauleigh.
"Then I'd rather she stopped. My father says you should always have a witness to important talk," said Tinker, and he smiled at her.
"Stuff and nonsense! I'm your grandmother!" cried Lady Beauleigh angrily.
"Ah, then your name is Vane," said Tinker sweetly.
"Vane! Vane!" Lady Beauleigh gasped rather than spoke the hated name. "It's nothing of the kind! It's Beauleigh! I'm Lady Beauleigh!"
"I'm afraid there must be some mistake. You can't be my grandmother on my father's side. My father's mother is dead," said Tinker in a tone which almost seemed to apologise for her error.
"You must be very stupid, or very ignorant!" cried Lady Beauleigh. "I'm your grandfather's second wife, as you ought to know!"
"Oh, I know, now," said Tinker; and his face shone with his sudden enlightenment. "You keep a bank."
"I—keep—a—bank?" said Lady Beauleigh in a dreadful voice.
"Oh, not a roulette bank or baccarat bank," said Tinker with well-affected hastiness. "One of the shop kind—where they sell money—with glass doors."
"My father was a banker, if that's what you mean," said Lady Beauleigh. "But a bank isn't a shop."
"Oh, I always think it a kind of shop," said Tinker with the dispassionate air of a professor discussing a problem in the Higher Mathematics. "It's as well to lump all these—these commercial things together, isn't it?" And he was very pleased with the word commercial.
"No: it isn't! A bank isn't a shop, you stupid little boy!" cried Lady Beauleigh hotly.
"Well, just as you like," said Tinker with graceful surrender. "I only call it a shop because it's convenient."
"A boy of your age ought not to think about convenience. You ought to have been taught to keep things clear and distinct," said Lady Beauleigh in a heavy, didactic voice.
"Oh, it's quite clear to me, really, that a bank's a shop; but we won't talk about it, if you're ashamed of it. After all, one doesn't talk about trade, does one?" said Tinker with a return to his kindly but exasperating patronage.
"Ashamed of it? I'm not ashamed of it!" said Lady Beauleigh in the roar of a wounded lioness.
"No, no; of course not! I only thought you were! I made a mistake!" said Tinker quickly, with an infuriating show of humouring her.
"I'm proud of it! Proud of it!" said Lady Beauleigh thickly. "And when you grow up and understand things, you'll wish your father had been a banker, too!"
"I don't think so," said Tinker; and he smiled at her very pleasantly. "I'm quite satisfied with my father as he is. I'd really rather that he was a gentleman."
"A banker is a gentleman!" cried Lady Beauleigh.
"Yes, yes, of course," said Tinker, humouring her again. "He's—he's a commercial gentleman."
Lady Beauleigh could find no words. Never in the course of her domineering life had she been raised to such an exaltation of whole-souled exasperation. She could only glare at the suave disposer of her long-cherished, long-asserted pretensions; and she glared with a fury which made Elsie, who had edged little by little to the extreme edge of the seat, rise softly and take up a safer position, standing three yards away.
Tinker took advantage of Lady Beauleigh's helpless speechlessness to say thoughtfully, "But about your being my grandmother? If you're not my father's mother or my mother's mother, you can't really be my grandmother. You must be my step-grandmother.
"I should think," Tinker went on, and his thoughtfulness became a thoughtful earnestness, "that you must be what people call a connection by marriage; not quite one of the family."
The thoughtfulness cleared from Tinker's brow, and he said with a pleasant smile, "But that's got nothing to do with what you came to talk about. You said it was important. What did you want to say?"
Lady Beauleigh remembered suddenly that she had come on an errand connected with her promotion of the glory of the Beauleighs. She swallowed down her fury, wiped her face with her handkerchief, and said in a hoarse and somewhat shaky voice, "I came to make you an offer."
Tinker beamed on her.
"You must be tired of this beggarly life, going about from pillar to post, living in wretched Continental hotels, with no pocket money."
Tinker raised his eyebrows.
"I know what your father's life is, just a mere penniless adventurer's."
Tinker beamed no more.
"And I came to offer to take you to live with me at Beauleigh Court. It's a beautiful big house in the country with woods all around it, and hunting and fishing and shooting and tennis-courts and fruit-gardens, and a cricket-ground, everything that a boy could want."
"And you," said Tinker in the expressionless tone of one adding an item to a catalogue.
"Yes; and me to look after you. You should have a bicycle." And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.
And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.[Illustration: And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.]
And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.[Illustration: And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.]
"I have a bicycle," said Tinker.
"Well—two bicycles—and a pony——"
"I don't like ponies—they're too slow," said Tinker in a weary voice. "I always ride a horse."
"Well, you should have a horse—a horse of your own."
"What's the hunting like? But, there, I know; it can't be up to much; it never is in those southern counties. I always hunt in Leicestershire. I've got used to it."
"You hunt in Leicestershire?" said Lady Beauleigh with some surprise.
"Oh course. Where does one hunt?" said Tinker, echoing her surprise.
"But—but—where does your horse come from? I know your father can't afford to keep horses!"
"Sometimes he can," said Tinker. "And if he has had to sell them, a dozen people will always mount us."
Lady Beauleigh paused; and then she made the last, lavish bid. "And I would allow you a hundred a year pocket-money. Why—why, you would be a little Prince!"
"A little Prince! And learn geography! No, thank you!" said Tinker, startled out of his calm. "Besides," he added carelessly, "I've made five thousand in the last year."
"Five thousand what?"
"Pounds."
"Come, come," said Lady Beauleigh, shaking her head, "you mustn't tell me lies."
"It isn't a lie! Tinker never tells lies," broke in Elsie hotly.
"Hold your tongue, you impertinent little minx!" said Lady Beauleigh sharply. "Who asked you to speak?"
"I think you're a horrid——" said Elsie, and was checked by Tinker's upraised hand.
"And when I died," Lady Beauleigh went on, turning again to Tinker, "I should leave you thirty thousand a year—think of it—thirty thousand a year!"
"It all sounds very nice," said Tinker in a painfully indifferent tone. "But I'm afraid it wouldn't do."
"Wouldn't do? Why wouldn't it do? To live in a beautiful big house in the country, and have everything a boy could want! Why wouldn't it do?" cried Lady Beauleigh, excited by opposition to a feverish desire to compass the end on which her heart had been set for many months.
"Do you really want to know," said Tinker very gently, but with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
"Yes; I insist on knowing!" cried Lady Beauleigh.
"Well," said Tinker slowly, pronouncing every word with a very deliberate distinctness, "we shouldn't get on, you and I. I don't know how it is; but I never get on with people who keep shops or banks. I'm afraid you're not quite—well-bred."
Stout Lady Beauleigh sprang to her feet.
"Ah, well," said Tinker quietly, "you treated my father and mother very cruelly, you've just said rude things about both of them, and you've been rude to Elsie. The fact is, I don't see that I want a step-grandmother at all; and I can't be expected to want an ill-bred one anyway. So—so—I disown you."
Lady Beauleigh's face quivered with rage; she gathered herself together as if to box Tinker's ears; thought better of it, and hurried away.
Tinker and Elsie looked at one another, and laughed softly.
"Horrid old woman," said Elsie.
"A dreadful person," said Tinker.
As Lady Beauleigh strode out of the gardens, she came full upon Sir Tancred and Dorothy. He raised his hat, she tried to glare through him, and glared at him.
"That's my step-mother," said Sir Tancred. "I wonder what's the matter with her. She looks upset."
"Upset! Why, she looked furious—malignant!" said Dorothy.
Then they saw Tinker and Elsie coming towards them.
"I see," said Sir Tancred softly.
"Oh, if she's met my young charges!" said Dorothy, and she threw out her hands.
"Have you been doing anything to your grandmother, Tinker?" cried Sir Tancred.
"Well—I disowned her," said Tinker.
"Disowned her!"
"Yes; I had to," said Tinker with a faint regret. "She was rude, and she was wearing a gown which would have stood up by itself if she had got out of it—at Monte Carlo—in April—it's impossible!"
He shrugged his shoulders.