TINKER'S BIRTHDAY BLOODHOUND Hildebrand Anne came out of the long glass doors of the morning room of the Refuge, as Sir Tancred had happily named the cottage at Farndon-Pryze, which he had bought soon after Jeddah won the Derby at a hundred to one, and whither he retired when he was at loggerheads with Fortune, or Hildebrand Anne began to look fagged by London life.

His father was reading a newspaper at the end of the lawn, and he walked across to him.
Sir Tancred looked up from his paper, and said with a sigh: "I'm afraid there's no birthday present for you, Tinker." "That's all right, sir," said Tinker cheerfully.
Father and son made an admirable pair, a pair of an extraordinary distinction.

Reckless pride and sorrow had impressed on Sir Tancred's dark, sombre face much of the look of Lucifer, Son of the Morning; Tinker was very fair with close-cropped golden curls clustering round his small head, features as finely cut as those of his father, sunny blue eyes, lips curved like Cupid's bow, and the air of a seraph.

The name had clung to him from its perfect inappropriateness.

A tinker is but a gritty sight, and Hildebrand Anne had grown up, to the eye, an angel child, of a cleanliness uncanny in a small boy.
"Even if there were anything to buy in Farndon-Pryze, our fortunes are at a low ebb," said Sir Tancred with faint sorrow.
Tinker heaved a sympathetic sigh, and said again, "Oh, that's all right, sir." "And the papers offer no suggestions for a new campaign," and Sir Tancred, looking with some contempt at the score of grey, pink, yellow, and green sheets which littered the grass around his long cane chair, fanned himself with his panama; for, though the month was May, the morning was hot.
"We shall have lots of money soon," said Tinker cheerily.
"Well, I hope so.