CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TINKER TAKES SEPTIMUS RAINER IN HAND
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.