Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/244

 and comely face before him heighten in colour and become illuminated by a surreptitious amusement. "I'll tell you," Tinker said unctuously;—"but don't you ever breathe it to a soul: my wife would just fairly scalp me alive. Mrs. Mummero certainly knows her way around! She took me a drive day before yesterday to see some monkeys, about fifty or sixty miles, I guess; and yesterday she got me to come and eat lunch with her at a hotel up over the hill here."

"What?" Ogle gasped. "You say she"

"She's a wonder!" Tinker said earnestly. "You talk about brains; why, that woman's got more brains in her little finger than a whole Bankers' Convention in their heads. She's"

He was interrupted. His daughter, coming from behind him, touched his shoulder. "Mother wants you to come and dress."

"Murder!" he exclaimed, jumping up guiltily. "How long you been standin' there? Did you hear what I"

"I did not," she said brusquely. "I'm not interested in what you say."

"Well, that's lucky—sometimes," he returned; and