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."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TINKER DISOWNS HIS GRANDMOTHER

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 wha