" 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 prete