Wicked Uncle by Patricia Wentworth Page B

does— that I haven’t got an aunt in the world, I couldn’t possibly. I’ve just spent twenty pounds of her money on a dress, and I’ve got to work it out.”
    Justin looked angrier than she had ever seen him.
    “You can take the damned thing back!”
    “They wouldn’t give me the money,” said Dorinda with conviction. “They’d just say they would put it to Modom’s credit, and that wouldn’t be any use at all, because Mrs. Oakley wouldn’t shop there for herself—she told me so. She said they had very nice inexpensive little frocks for girls, but of course she had to pay a great deal more for her own things. So you see, I can’t possibly.”
    Justin leaned across the table.
    “Dorinda—let me lend you the twenty pounds.”
    Gratitude made Dorinda’s eyes look exactly like peat-water with the sun on it.
    “I think that’s absolutely noble of you. But of course I can’t let you.”
    “You must.”
    “Darling, I can’t. Aunt Mary would get right up and haunt me. It was one of her very strictest things—never let a man speak to you unless he’s introduced, never let a man pay your debts, never let a man lend you money. And when you’ve had that sort of thing soaked into you for as long as you can remember, you just can’t—not even if you try.”
    “Relations are quite different,” said Justin.
    Dorinda shook her head.
    “Not when they’re men. Aunt Mary had a special thing about cousins. She said they were insidious.”
    Justin burst out laughing, which relieved the emotional strain. Just why there should have been a strain, he wasn’t clear. He had felt angrier than he could remember to have done for quite a long time, and when Dorinda began to be obstinate, an urge out of a neolithic past had suggested to him how pleasant it would be to knock her over the head and drag her to a cave by the hair. The suggestion did not, of course, arrive in words, but this was what it amounted to.
    The laughter carried it away, but Dorinda’s obstinacy remained. She wanted to keep her job, she wanted to keep her twenty-pound dress, she didn’t want to go back to the Heather Club, and she was thrilled through and through because of Justin being really angry and really interested. It wasn’t Aunt Mary who had told her that a man only scolds a woman when he is fond of her. It was Judith Crane, the girl who had annoyed the old ladies at the Heather Club by having so many baths and going out with so many young men. One way and another Dorinda had learned quite a lot from Judith Crane. Aunt Mary’s foundation-laying had been very solid and sound but the lighter touches had been wanting, and having suffered from a Wicked Uncle had, perhaps naturally, given her a poor view of men. They had to be, but the less you had to do with them the better for your peace of mind.
    With all this at the back of her thought, Dorinda continued to glow with gratitude and to say no to the twenty pounds. She also ate a very good lunch and recurred at intervals to the subject of Miss Maud Silver.
    “She gave me her card, and she said if I had any more trouble to let her know at once. I told her I couldn’t pay a fee or anything like that, and she said it didn’t matter—just to let her know. Justin, she’s rather a pet. She patted my hand, and she said, ‘My dear, there was a time when I was a young girl earning my living in other people’s houses. I have so much to be grateful for that I like to pay a little of the debt when I can.’ ”
    In the end Justin gave up. He had something to give Dorinda, and if he wrangled with her up to the last moment, the atmosphere would be all wrong. Not that there was any wrangling on Dorinda’s side. She just glowed, and called him darling, and went on saying no. He began to feel that he must be making a fool of himself. What he wanted for his little presentation was the attitude of the kind, indulgent cousin, but he didn’t find it easy to come by.
    Dorinda gave him an opening by