He knew more about 'swims' than his granddaughter.

But she, having clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed her chin against him, making a sound like a purring cat.

And, knocking the ash off his cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation: "You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till you've got what you want.
If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands of it." So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they should not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.
"I shan't be able to give you very much," he had said, a formula to which June was not unaccustomed.

"Perhaps this What's-his-name will provide the cocoa." He had hardly seen anything of her since it began.

A bad business! He had no notion of giving her a lot of money to enable a fellow he knew nothing about to live on in idleness.