Nurse Trent's Children by Joyce Dingwell Page B

acknowledgment, but she waved the gesture away impatiently.
    “I didn’t mean that as a compliment. There is something about you that makes me say the ... the sort of thing I just said.”
    “And don’t mean?”
    “Oh, I mean them.”
    “So?” He regarded her quizzically and at length. After a while he said, “Thank heaven, anyway, I have some effect on you. I’d hate to leave you quite indifferent. ”
    “What does it matter how you leave me?”
    He shrugged. “Nothing at all. I’m just vain and dislike leaving anyone without an impression, good or bad. The matter is settled then, is it? Although you don’t want to, you’ll dine with me because you have to. I’ll be around at half-past seven. Good afternoon, Aunty Cathy.”
    He was gone, and immediately the room seemed to grow bigger again. Cathy washed the saucepan and hung it up, and as she did so she found herself actually looking forward to the evening that lay before her. However enthusiastic one was over children, one could not absorb oneself completely in the wholesome food that went to nourish them—not, anyway, to the extent of not relishing a meal designed solely to pander to the palate instead of the building of firm flesh.
    Besides, it would be nice to dress up again.
    She ran upstairs and opened her wardrobe. There was quite an array to select from, and none of them was more than a few months old. The week before the finals a party of the trainees had celebrated the end of their studies with a shopping binge, and the gold brocade and the Ming blue lace were the result of an hour in a fitting room in Bond Street surrounded by advising friends.
    For a moment Cathy halted her selection, her hands on a tea rose silk. Daddy and mommy had sent this for her twentieth birthday with slippers to match.
    She pushed back the silk rather blindly, passed over several more dresses thinking, I’m rather well supplied, but then I used to spend every penny on rags because I never thought of the future. I never thought I ’ d have to ... to ...
    She recalled sitting in the solicitor’s dull brown room and the s o licitor telling her how little there was to come to her. “It costs much more to die than to be born, Miss Trent,” he had finished with feeling. “Taking that into consideration, as well as the fact that your late parents lived in probably the most expensive times one could live in, you will realize why you are left practically unsupported.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Cathy had answered dully, “nothing matters.”
    She looked at the dresses now and smiled ruefully. All the same, she thought, less for my back and more for the bank would have been wiser of you, Aunty Cathy.
    A flick of the dress hangers, and her eye fell on the black taffeta. It was a plain two-piece creation. It had a slim, almost clinging, skirt and a high, concealing little jacket to wear over it. But the bodice of the gown itself was almost daringly décolleté , so much so that after her fellow trainees had teased and called her the tragedy queen, she had never worn it. She knew it was not her dress and never would be. She knew it was one of those shopping errors all women make at least once in their lives. She was not the décolleté type—well, not as décolleté as was this gown. She was not the slinky, clinging, revealing sort of person to wear such a dress. Yet as she fingered the smooth material she felt the challenge—Dr. Malcolm’s challenge. English prude, was she? With flaming cheeks she laid out the gown, the plain gabardine shoes to match, and the plain grosgrain bag. Then she went downstairs and out to the grounds, joined some of the girls in their gardening, played a round of basketball, helped the little ones down the slippery slide—and all the time thought with a certain misgiving, coupled with a stubborn determination, of a tight black décolleté gown.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
    The children were helping w ith the dishes when Elvira arrived back. She had cycled