had become an agreeable variety
in the monotonous lives of the guardians; they never knew when or in
what fashion it would come next.

Now he had another occupation, the shadowing of Mr. Arthur Courtnay.
That florid Adonis never grew used to hearing a gentle voice singing
softly:

"Get your hair cut! Get your hair cut!"

or,

"Oh, Tatcho! Oh, Tatcho!
Rejoice, ye bald and weary men!
You'll soon be regular hairy men!
Sing! Rejoice! Let your voices go!
Sprinkle some on your cranium!
What, ho! Tatcho!"

The poetry was vulgar; but long ago his insight into the heart of man
had taught Tinker to attack the vulgar with the only weapon effective
against them, vulgarity.

Sooner or later, whether he was walking, or sitting with Claire, those
vulgar strains would be wafted to Mr. Arthur Courtnay's ears, and they
injured his cause. They kept alive in the girl's mind an uneasy doubt
whether her father was right in asserting Arthur Courtnay to be one of
the nicest fellows he had ever met, a veritable gentleman of the old
school, an opinion founded on the fact that Courtnay was the only man
who had ever given two hours' close attention to his views on
Protection.

But, for all this lurking doubt, Courtnay's influence over her was
growing stronger and stronger. He was forever appealing to her pity by
telling her of the hard and lonely life he had lived since his father,
a poor gentleman of good family, had died in exile at Boulogne.
Really, his father, a stout but impecunious horse-dealer of the name of
Budgett, certainly in exile at Boulogne owing to a standing difference
with the bankruptcy laws of his country, was alive still. But Arthur
was very fond of himself, and once in the mood of self-pity, he could
invent pathetic anecdote after pathetic anecdote of his privations
which would have touched the heart of a hardened grandmother, much more
of a susceptible girl. She fell into the way of calling him "King
Arthur" to herself.

He devoted himself to winning her with an unrelaxing energy, for she
had forty thousand pounds of her own.

But he cared very little for her, and sometimes he found his
love-making hard work. She was not the type of girl whom he admired;
her delicacy irritated him; he preferred what the poet has called "an
armful of girl," buxom and hearty. Often, therefore, when she had gone
to bed, he would refresh himself by a vigorous flirtation with Madame
Seraphine de Belle-Ile