“Thanks, no. I’m not such a very bad sailor, but not good enough to enjoy my dinner with the table dancing up and down. Going to be a gale.”
“Humph! Yes, I suppose it will be a bit rough, even if we shift the moorings. Never mind, come and dine with me at the hotel and we can have a private room, and a hand at cards with our coffee.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the doctor, hesitating.
“Yes, come,” said Glyddyr eagerly. “I’m dull and hipped. Want a companion. Do me more good than your tonics. At seven.”
“Very well,” said the doctor, “seven be it. Do me good, too, perhaps,” he muttered, as he went away. “Better for him to marry her. Yes, I can turn him round my finger.”
He went home musing deeply, and, punctual to time, joined Glyddyr at the hotel, to find him looking flushed and excited.
“Hallo! That’s not the tonic,” he said.
“Eh! Tonic? No, it’s the weather. Storm always affects me a little. I was obliged to have a pint of champagne to pull me up.”
The doctor laughed as he shook his head, for he saw in the half-wrecked man before him, a life annuity, if the cards were rightly played, and during the dinner he once or twice told himself that his game was to hurry on the engagement between Claude and Glyddyr.
“If he is wise,” the doctor said to himself, “Glyddyr will play the trump card. It would take the trick. Your father’s wish, my dear. Poor old gentleman.”