Free Dear Trustee by Mary Burchell

they were late, rather than eagerly looked for, although, in point of fact, they were ten minutes earlier than the time suggested. “He is in the small drawing room.”
    Then she conducted them to such a large and lofty room that Cecile was left wondering what the large drawing room could possibly be like.
    In a chair by the window, with a rug over his knees, sat a spare, shrunken little man of quite indeterminable age. His hair was white and his skin deeply lined, but his eyes were dark and flashing and rather disconcertingly shrewd.
    “Come in,” he said, in a high-pitched, impatient voice, “come in. Don’t leave the door open. There’s a draught.” And then, as Cec il e approached his chair, he turned those uncomfortably bright eyes upon her.
    “So you’re poor Henry Bernardine’s daughter?” He shook his head gloomily, but whether in sympathy for her father or poor opinion of herself, Cecile was not quite sure.
    “Yes, I’m Cecile,” she agreed, and she took his dry, old hand in hers, half amused, half touched by the peculiar old man before her.
    “You’re not much like him.” Uncle Algernon shook his head again. “You’re like your flibbertigibbet of a mother.”
    Cecile had never heard anyone referred to as a flibbertigibbet in real life, and, while she was annoyed at this stricture on her mother, she could not but be intrigued by the use of the term. Indeed, Uncle Algernon was so much like someone out of a Victorian novel that she would not have been greatly surprised if he had addressed Maurice as “Nevvy”.
    However, he addressed him as Maurice—in order to enquire disagreeably why he was not at work.
    Maurice explained, with a specially winning smile, about his few days’ leave. But Uncle Algernon seemed to think poorly of this explanation. For, to Cecile’s immense delight, he said, “Tcha!” adding that Maurice would never get rich that way. Which seemed to depress Maurice unduly, Cecile thought.
    “Well, sit down, sit down,” the old man said. “So I’m one of your trustees? The other two won’t be much good to you. There’s Josephine Coulter, who had no more sense than to marry a hypochondriac. And then there’s young Gregory Picton, who’s too busy playing the buffoon in the Law Courts to be much use to you either.”
    “Gregory doesn’t play the buffoon at all,” Cecile said indignantly, as she recalled the extremely restrained and skillful way he had conducted his case when she was in Court.
    “Well, he gets his name into the headlines of the popular newspapers,” retorted the old man. “And no one does that without playing the buffoon.”
    “I don’t agree with you at all,” stated Cecile pleasantly but firmly. Which seemed to cause a certain amount of anxiety to Maurice, and a good deal of astonishment and pleasure to Uncle Algernon.
    “You don’t need to,” Uncle Algernon said. “But don’t you go thinking Gregory Picton is perfect, just because he has a handsome face and a lot of animal vitality.”
    “I don’t think he is perfect at all,” Cecile retorted unequivocally.
    “No?” Uncle Algernon gave her a malicious little glance of enquiry. “Well, a lot of girls do. But none of them have a chance with him, I can tell you that. The only one who ever did was my great-niece, Felicity Waring. And she didn’t want him.”

 
    CHAPTER IV
    I t said something for Cecile’s self-control that she did not exclaim, “Felicity Waring? Oh, do tell me about her.”
    But she had already taken the measure of Uncle Algernon and was certain that any direct request for information would be met by clam-like reserve. So, instead, she said reflectively, “I think I met her last night. She had just come home from the States. But I didn’t know she was your great-niece.”
    “She wouldn’t be wearing a label to that effect,” replied Uncle Algernon disagreeably, because at this particular moment he wished to be the one imparting information, not receiving it. Though