"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.
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.
"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.
"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!"
Dorothy sat gazing over that charming gulf, charming alike for its scenery and its oysters, the Gulf of Arcachon. She gazed on it without seeing it; her beautiful face was clouded, and her brow was puckered in a wondering perplexity.
Tinker sat on the ground near her, his chin on his knees, observing her with a sympathetic understanding which would have disquieted her not a little, had she not been too busy with her thoughts to notice it.
They were still and silent for a long while, until she sighed; then he said, with unfeigned sadness, "I'm beginning to think he never will."
"Who never will what?" said Dorothy, awaking from her reflections, and extremely disconcerted by the exactness with which Tinker's remark echoed them.
"My father--ask you to marry him," said Tinker succinctly.
"Tinker!" cried Dorothy faintly, and she flushed a very fine red.
"It's all very well to say 'Tinker!' like that," he said, shaking his head very wisely. "But it's much better to look at things straight, don't you know? You often get a little forrarder that way."