Mrs. Oakley, in a rose-coloured negligée covered with frills, nestled among the cushions, whilst Dorinda sat on a horribly uncomfortable gold chair and poured out. Just as they were finishing, a knock came at the door. Mrs. Oakley said “Come in!” in rather a surprised voice, and Florence Cole, still in her outdoor things, advanced into the room. She wore an air of dogged purpose, and Dorinda knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth. She said it in quite a loud, determined voice.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Oakley, but I’m not staying. There’s a train at six, and I’m catching it. I’ve given that child his tea, and left him with the housemaid. She tells me his old nurse is in the village, and that she can manage him. I can’t. If there’s anyone who can, you’d better have her back. He’s just tried to pour the boiling kettle-water over my foot. If you ask me, he’s not safe.”
“He has such high spirits,” said Mrs. Oakley.
“He wants a good whipping!” said Miss Cole. A dull colour came into her face. “Are you going to pay me for the ten days I’ve put up with him, Mrs. Oakley? You’re not legally bound to, but I think anyone would say I’d earned it.”
Mrs. Oakley looked bewildered.
“I don’t know what I did with my purse,” she said. “It will be somewhere in my bedroom-if you don’t mind, Miss Brown. Perhaps you and Miss Cole could look for it together. It will be in that bag I had in the car.”
When they had found it, and Florence Cole had been paid a generous addition to cover her railway fare, her manner softened.
“If you like, Mrs. Oakley, I can stop and see Nurse Mason on my way through the village. Doris says I can’t miss the house.”
Mrs. Oakley fluttered.
“Oh, no, you can’t miss it. But perhaps she won’t come back. My husband thought Marty was getting too old for a nurse. She was very much upset about it. Perhaps she won’t come.”
“ Doris says she’ll jump at it,” said Florence Cole. “She says she’s devoted to Marty.” Her tone was that of one confronted by some phenomenon quite beyond comprehension.
Mrs. Oakley continued to flutter.
“Well, perhaps you’d better. But my husband mayn’t like it- perhaps Miss Brown-”
“I couldn’t possibly,” said Dorinda with unmistakable firmness.
Mrs. Oakley closed her eyes.
“Well then, perhaps-yes, it will be very kind if you will-only I hope my husband-”
Florence Cole said, “Goodbye, Mrs. Oakley,” and walked out of the room.
Dorinda went out on to the landing with her and shook hands.
“I hope you’ll get a nice job soon,” she said. “Have you anywhere to go?”
“Yes, I’ve got a married sister. Are you going to stay?”
“I shall if I can.”
Florence Cole said, “Well, if you ask me, it’s the kind of place to get out of.”
Dorinda remembered that afterwards.
Chapter V
It was about an hour and a half later that Dorinda knocked on what had been the nursery door. A voice said, “Come in!” and she had no sooner done so than she became aware that after a brief unhappy interlude as a schoolroom it had quite firmly reverted to being a nursery again. All Marty’s clothes were airing in front of a fire, Marty was putting away his toys in a toy-cupboard, and a large, firm, buxom woman whom no one could have taken for anything but a nurse, was sitting up to the table darning socks. The scene was peaceful in the extreme, but there was an underlying feeling that if anything broke the peace, Nurse would want to know the reason why. Dorinda knew all about nurses. She had had a very strict old-fashioned one herself in the days before so much of Aunt Mary’s money had been disposed of by the Wicked Uncle. She said, “Good afternoon, Nurse,” very respectfully, and then explained that Mrs. Oakley had asked her to find out whether she had everything she wanted.
Nurse Mason inclined her head and said in a tone which was more non-belligerent than neutral that what she hadn’t got she would see about, thank you.
Marty stopped with a headless horse in his hand.
“Nannie says she never did see anything like the way my things is gone to rack an’ ruin.”
“That will be enough from you, Marty! You keep right on putting those toys away-and shocked I am to see the way they’ve been broke.”
Marty thrust the mutilated horse out of sight and turned round with a cheerful smile.
“I’ve been a very naughty boy since you’ve been away, haven’t I, Nannie?”
“You go on picking up your toys!”
With an armful of wreckage, Marty continued to discourse.
“I frowed her brooch out of the car”-he appealed to Dorinda for confirmation-“didn’t I? And I digged a pin into her leg to make it bleed. Did it bleed, Miss Brown?”
“I haven’t looked,” said Dorinda.
Nurse had fixed a penetrating eye upon the culprit.
“Then you say you’re sorry to Miss Brown this very minute! Digging pins into people to make them bleed-I never heard such a thing! More like naked heathen savages than a child brought up in any nursery of mine! Go and say you’re sorry at once!”
Marty dropped all the toys he had gathered, advanced two paces, clasped his hands in front of him, and recited in a rapid sing-song,
“I’m sorry I was a naughty boy and I won’t do it again.”
There was a little talk about the brooch, Nurse being much shocked on hearing that it had been a legacy from a great-grandmother, and Marty contributing a few facts about cairngorms and finishing up with,
“I frowed it as hard as shooting from a gun.”
“I don’t want to hear no more about it,” said Nurse with decision.
“And I frowed water out of the kettle on to Miss Cole, and she put on her coat and hat and went away.”
“That’s enough, Marty! If those toys aren’t back in ten minutes, you know what will happen.”
He bent strenuously to the task.
Dorinda turned to go, but just as she did so something caught her eye. When Marty dropped his armful it had really been more of a throw than a drop. The lighter things had scattered, amongst them a bent carte-de-visite photograph. Dorinda picked it up and began to straighten it out. At just what instant everything in her began a landslide, she didn’t know. She heard Nurse say sharply,
“Marty, wherever did you get that photograph from? Is it one of your mother’s?”
And she heard him say, “It comed out of a box.”
“What box did it come out of?”
“A box. And it was all crumpled up and stuck in underneaf.”
Dorinda heard the words, but she didn’t make anything of them. She was sliding much too fast. By making a simply tremendous effort she managed to say, “I’ll see it’s put back,” and she managed to get out of the room.
Her own room was just across the landing. When she had locked herself in she sat down on the bed and gazed in unbelieving horror at the crumpled photograph. There wasn’t any mistake: The name of the photographer was glaringly legible- “Charles Rowbecker and Son, Norwood.” It was the twin photograph of the one in Aunt Mary’s album. It was, incredibly but indisputably, a photograph of the Wicked Uncle.
Chapter VI
It was certainly a shock. Practically everyone has a relation whom they hope never to see again. There never has been, and probably never will be a time when this would occasion any particular remark. Dorinda sat and looked at the photograph and told herself what a perfectly ordinary thing it was to have a Wicked Uncle, and to find his photo doubled up among the nursery toys of your employer’s brat. She had the feeling that if she could convince herself of the ordinariness of what had just happened she would stop feeling as if she might be going to be sick. The fact was that she had always had what she chose to call a complex about Glen Porteous. A very, very long time ago that famous charm of his had charmed her too. And then one night she woke up and heard him talking to Aunt Mary, and all the charm turned to bitter poison. She couldn’t have been more than six years old, but she never forgot lying there in the dark and hearing them in the next room. The door must have been open, because she could hear quite well, and she never forgot, because it was the first time that she had heard a grown-up person cry. Aunt Mary had cried bitterly, and Uncle Glen had laughed at her as if she was doing something very amusing. After that he went away for about two years. Aunt Mary didn’t cry any more, but she got very strict and cross.