On the other
hand, he found in him an absorbed listener to the stories of his less
involved financial battles, and spared no pains to make them clear to
him. Sir Tancred interested him little less, and he was always
deploring the loss the splendid army of millionaires had suffered by
his excellent abilities not having been forced to flow in a business
channel.
He was distressed, too, about the waste of Tinker, and adjured his
father to hand him over to him to be made a millionaire of.
But Sir Tancred turned a deaf ear to his petition, and said, "Of
course, if Tinker went into business he would become a millionaire.
And it's a fashionable occupation, and I've nothing to say against it.
But over here, with some of us, there are still other things besides
money--not that there will be long--and for my part I shall be content
if he grows up a gentleman, as he will. Business might spoil that; and
at any rate I won't chance it. And, after all, my step-mother won't
live to much more than eighty, so that he will have thirty thousand a
year before he's forty-five."
"That's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars," said Septimus Rainer
thoughtfully, and he pressed the point no more.
He was far too shrewd not to perceive the attraction Sir Tancred and
Dorothy had for one another, and he regarded it with entire content.
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