Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/241

 He paused, leaned over and put his hand solemnly upon Ogle's knee. "Son, when I get home if anybody ever tries to tell me anything about smells, I'm goin' to say: 'Listen! Don't try to talk to me on that topic, because I've met the King!

When Tinker called him "Son," Ogle glanced wretchedly across the room at the English party to whom the hearty Midland voice could not fail to be audible; but they were preoccupied with their own affairs. General Broadfeather had discovered that some marmalade he had ordered was not quite to his taste. "A bit tweaky," he pronounced it; and one of the ladies disagreed with him. "Tweaky? You're too funny, S'William!"

Tinker, too, had paused to listen to this simple little dialogue, and his untrained Midland ear failed to identify it as being of his own language. The pronunciations were unfamiliar to him, the cadenced inflections confusing. "A bit tweaky" he heard as "beet tweekeh" and "you're too funny" as "yaw tewfenneh." The strange sounds and the people, as strange to him as what they uttered, interested him a little.

"French family, I expect," he said, his glance resting upon them speculatively, and, while Ogle's flesh