At the sight of them Sir Tancred smiled, and Lord Crosland said, "I
congratulate you on your taste, young people."
"It was Tinker's," said Elsie; and she looked at him with a world of
thankfulness and devotion in her eyes.
After dinner Tinker was uncomfortable. He felt bound to break to Elsie
her uncle's desertion, and he was afraid of tears. With a vague notion
of emphasising the difference between her uncle's _regime_ and his own,
he led the way to the corner of the gardens where they had first met
and, standing before the seat on which she had waited so long and
hungrily, he said, "I say, don't you think we could do without your
uncle?"
"Do without uncle?" said Elsie surprised.
"Yes; suppose, instead of living with your uncle and his looking after
you, you lived with us, and I looked after you? Suppose you were to be
my adopted sister?"
"For good and all?" said Elsie in a hushed voice.
"Yes."
For answer she threw her arms round his neck, kissed him, and cried,
"Oh, I do love you so."
By a splendid effort Tinker repressed a wriggle.
"We'll consider it settled, then," he said.
Elsie loosed him. With a little deprecating cough, and a delicate
tentativeness, he said, "About kissing, of course, now that you're my
sister you have a right to kiss me sometimes; and--and--of course it's
all right.
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