Allie, I remembered, was Dinky-Dunk’s English cousin, Lady Alicia Elizabeth Newland, who’d made the Channel flight in a navy plane and the year before had figured in a Devonshire motor-car accident. Dinky-Dunk had a picture of her, from The Queen, up in his study somewhere, the picture of a very debonair and slender young woman on an Irish hunter. He had a still younger picture of her in a tweed skirt and spats and golf-boots, on the brick steps of a Sussex country-house, with the jaw of a bull-dog resting across her knee. It was signed and dated and in a silver frame and every time I’d found myself polishing that oblong of silver I’d done so with a wifely ruffle of temper.
“How much was it?” I finally asked, still adhering to my rôle of the imperturbable chorus.
“She sent out over seven thousand pounds. She wanted it invested out here.”
“Why?”
“Because of the new English taxes, I suppose. She said she wanted a ranch, but she left everything to me.”
“Then it was a trust fund!”
Dinky-Dunk bowed his head, in assent.
“It practically amounted to that,” he acknowledged.
“And it’s gone?”
“Every penny of it.”