Biggleswade, roused from
her napping, caught the child by the arm, and shaking her, said
savagely, "Sit down, you little brat! Keep quiet!"

The child sank down, and began to cry.

Tinker lay still for a while, and then began, to squirm away. When he
reached his hat, he rose to his feet, knocked the sand off his clothes,
and walked slowly back to his father.

"She answers to the name of Bessie, sir," he said quietly.

"Good!" said Sir Tancred, and he rose.

They walked down to the railway station; and on the way Sir Tancred
informed Tinker that he was to take Elizabeth Kernaby up to London, to
11a Cadogan Square, and, at a cost of six out of his seven shillings,
bought two half third-class tickets. On their way back he learned, no
less to his surprise than his joy, that Tinker was the possessor of
eighteenpence. To make assurance surer, therefore, he bought a basket
of strawberries, and when the Biggleswades returned to the hotel for
lunch, they found the Beauleighs in the porch, eating them.

"Would you like some strawberries, little girl?" said Tinker as they
passed, and he held out the basket to the child.

"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. Biggleswade and presently, touching the child
on