ou're a young woman now, and you must help me to think
of another cut and run, and what baggage we can scrape together in a
jiffy, for I won't live here at Mart Tinman's mercy."

Drying her eyes to weep again, Annette said, when she could speak: "Will
nothing quiet him? I was going to bother you with all sorts of silly
questions, poor dear papa; but I see I can understand if I try. Will
nothing--Is he so very angry? Can we not do something to pacify him? He
is fond of money. He--oh, the thought of leaving England! Papa, it will
kill you; you set your whole heart on England. We could--I could--could
I not, do you not think?--step between you as a peacemaker. Mr. Tinman
is always very courteous to me."

At these words of Annette's, Van Diemen burst into a short snap of
savage laughter. "But that's far away in the background, Mr. Mart
Tinman!" he said. "You stick to your game, I know that; but you'll find
me flown, though I leave a name to stink like your common behind
me. And," he added, as a chill reminder, "that name the name of my
benefactor. Poor old Van Diemen! He thought it a safe bequest to make."

"It was; it is! We will stay; we will not be exiled," said Annette. "I
will do anything. What was the quarrel about, papa?"

"The fact is, my dear, I just wanted to show him--and take down his
pride--I'm by my Australian education a shrewder hand than his old
country. I bought the house on the beach while he was chaffering, and
then I sold it him at a rise when the town was looking up--only to make
him see. Then he burst up about something I said of Australia. I will
have the common clean. Let him live at the Crouch as my tenant if he
finds the house on the beach in danger."

"Papa, I am sure," Annette repeated--"sure I have influence with Mr.
Tinman."

"There are those lips of yours shutting tight," said her father. "Just
listen, and they make a big O. The donkey! He owns you've got influence,
and he offers he'll be silent if you'll pledge your word to marry him.
I'm not sure he didn't say, within the year. I told him to look sharp
not to be knocked down again. Mart Tinman for my son-in-law! That's
an upside down of my expectations, as good as being at the antipodes
without a second voyage back! I let him know you were engaged."

Annette gazed at her father open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with
a little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another--as a
breeze curves the leaden winter lake here