TINKER DISOWNS HIS GRANDMOTHER On the eve of their departure for Arcachon, Tinker and Elsie were sitting in the gardens of the Temple of Fortune, taking a well-earned rest after a farewell bolt into the Salles de Jeu, in which Elsie also had played a gallant and successful part, for the somewhat obscure reason that it was the last bolt: so strengthening to her character had been companionship with Tinker.

She was receiving, with modest pride, his congratulations on having penetrated deeper than himself, to the innermost shrine, the Trente et Quarante table, in fact, when they saw coming towards them a large, majestic, white-haired lady, a small, subdued, mouse-haired lady, and a man of doubtful appearance.
Without causing him to pause in his congratulations, Tinker's active mind had placed the two women as a wealthy Englishwoman and her companion, and was hesitating whether to place the man in the class of Continental Guides or private detectives, when he pointed to the two children, and said something to the majestic lady.
"That's the little boy, is it?
Then you two go and sit on the next seat while I talk to him," said the majestic lady in a voice which lost in pleasantness what it gained in loudness; and she came to the seat on which Tinker and Elsie sat, while her attendants walked on.
Now to call him a little boy was by no means the quickest way to Tinker's heart, and he watched her draw near with a cold eye.

But all the same when she made as if to sit down, he rose and raised his hat with a charming smile.

She sat down and looked him over with a cool consideration which provoked his fastidiousness to no admiration of her breeding.

Then she said: "Are you Sir Tancred Beauleigh's little boy ?" "I am Hildebrand Anne Beauleigh," said Tinker in a faintly corrective tone quite lost on her complacent mind.
"Hildebrand Anne! Hildebrand Anne! She called you Hildebrand Anne, did she?
The impudence of these minxes!" said the majestic lady, and she sniffed like a lady of the lower-middle classes.
At once Tinker knew that she was Lady Beauleigh, and that she was speaking of his mother.