It'll be a weight off my mind, don't you know ?" said Tinker with a sigh.
"I'm sure it will," said the sympathetic Elsie.
"It must be awfully nice to be in love," she added with conviction.
"Now, look here," said Tinker in a terrible voice, "if I catch you falling in love, I'll--I'll shake you!" "But--but, I may be in love--ever so much, for anything you know," said Elsie somewhat haughtily.
"You are not," said Tinker sternly.

"Your appetite is all right.
Don't talk any more nonsense, but come along, we've got to get ready for the picnic." At half-past eleven the two children went on board the _Petrel_, a little steam yacht of a shallow draught adapted to the shoals of the Gulf, which Septimus Rainer had hired from a member of the Bordeaux Yacht Club.

They found Dorothy and Sir Tancred already on board, and were told that a cablegram from New York had given her father, his secretaries, and the telegraph office of Arcachon a day's work, and prevented him from coming with them.

Tinker had known this fact all the morning, but he did not say so.

His manner to his father showed a serene unconsciousness of any cloud upon their relations.
The _Petrel_ was soon crossing the Gulf in an immensely important way, at her full speed of eight knots an hour.