Part 26 (2/2)
”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 dispa.s.sionate 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-a.s.serted pretensions; and she glared with a fury which made Elsie, who had edged little by little to the extreme edge of the seat, rise softly and take up a safer position, standing three yards away.
Tinker took advantage of Lady Beauleigh's helpless speechlessness to say thoughtfully, ”But about your being my grandmother? If you're not my father's mother or my mother's mother, you can't really be my grandmother. You must be my step-grandmother.
”I should think,” Tinker went on, and his thoughtfulness became a thoughtful earnestness, ”that you must be what people call a connection by marriage; not quite one of the family.”
The thoughtfulness cleared from Tinker's brow, and he said with a pleasant smile, ”But that's got nothing to do with what you came to talk about. You said it was important. What did you want to say?”
Lady Beauleigh remembered suddenly that she had come on an errand connected with her promotion of the glory of the Beauleighs. She swallowed down her fury, wiped her face with her handkerchief, and said in a hoa.r.s.e and somewhat shaky voice, ”I came to make you an offer.”
Tinker beamed on her.
”You must be tired of this beggarly life, going about from pillar to post, living in wretched Continental hotels, with no pocket money.”
Tinker raised his eyebrows.
”I know what your father's life is, just a mere penniless adventurer's.”
Tinker beamed no more.
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