'A tinker!' repeated Sir Hugh, quite loud, in defiance of the signs and hists! hists! of Camilla, 'good lack! that's a person I should never have thought of!' Then, walking up to Mr. Dubster, who was taking into his hands all the ornaments from the chimney-piece, one by one, to examine, 'Sir,' he said, 'you may be a very good sort of man, and I don't doubt but you are, for I've a proper respect for every trade in its way; but in point of marrying my niece, it's a thing I must beg you to put out of your head; it not being a proper subject to talk of to a young lady, from a person in that line.'
'Very well, sir,' answered Mr. Dubster, stiffly, and pouting, 'it's not of much consequence; don't make yourself uneasy. There's nothing in what I was going to propose but what was quite genteel. I'd scorn to address a lady else. She'd have a good five hundred a-year, in case of outliving me.'
'Good lack! five hundred a-year! who'd have thought of such a thing by the tinkering business?'
'The what business, did you say, sir?' cried Mr. Dubster, strutting up to the baronet, with a solemn frown.
'The tinkering business, my good friend. An't you a tinker?'
'Sir!' cried Mr. Dubster, swelling, 'I did not think, when I was coming to make such a handsome offer, of being affronted at such a rate as this. Not that I mind it. It's not worth fretting about. However, as to a tinker, I'm no more a tinker than yourself, whatever put it in your head.'
'Good lack, my dear,' cried the baronet, to Camilla, 'the gentleman quite denies it.'
Camilla, though unable to refrain from laughing, confessed she had received the information from Mrs. Arlbery at the Northwick breakfast, who, she now supposed, had said it in random sport.
Sir Hugh cordially begged his pardon, and asked him to take a seat at the breakfast table, to soften the undesigned offence.
A note now arrived from Mr. Tyrold to the baronet. It contained his consent to return, with Lavinia, to Cleves, and his ready acquiescence in the little excursion to Southampton, since Miss Margland would be superintendant of the party; 'and since,' he added, 'they will have another guardian, to whom already I consign my Camilla, and, upon her account, my dear Eugenia also, with the same fearless confidence I should feel in seeing them again under the maternal wing.'