"Yeth, pleath," she said, and stepped forward to take one.
"No, no, Keziah," broke in Mrs. Biggleswade. "You know they don't
agree with you!" And she caught her away, and hurried her into the
hotel.
"Children like sweet things; but they sometimes don't agree with them,"
said Mr. Biggleswade sapiently, his loose and flabby bulk swelling yet
bigger at the thought that he was speaking to a member of the
aristocracy.
"That is very true," said Sir Tancred pleasantly.
Surprised by this affability, but swift to seize on a conversational
opening with a baronet, Mr. Biggleswade stayed talking with him in the
porch; he talked to him all lunch-time: and he talked to him on the
sands after lunch. His unbridled appetite for the society of the
aristocracy proved his undoing. For at a few minutes to three Sir
Tancred proposed a stroll along the shore. They went slowly, Mr.
Biggleswade rising to the great social occasion for which he had so
long hankered, and proving himself, in his talk, a thorough man of the
world.
As they passed round the promontory at the end of the little bay, and
Sir Tancred took out his handkerchief, Tinker was awaiting the signal,
impatient, but cool; and as they passed out of sight, he began to steal
up behind the drowsy Mrs.
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