[15: Something you learn from your mother.]

Dick hung his slicker on the peg by the door, dripping inside and out, and
paused for a moment, trying to consider just how much clothing he could get
out of without offending Meera.

Meera stood in the little kitchen awkwardly, and was trying halfway not to
watch too closely, but all too aware that the little house was just two
rooms, with nowhere she could easily retreat to. 

Dick peeled off wool layer after wool layer, still wet to the core and each
piece hanging awkwardly heavy on the back of the chair where he dropped it.

Finally he'd managed to get down to the shirt underneath it all, a plain
orange thing that clung to his body. Meera stammered a little, seeing the
outline of his wiry frame underneath the clinging cloth.

"I-- I can wait in the bedroom if you like." 

Dick flushed red, and then shrugged. "You can already see all of me through
this. No point in being modest now, I suppose."

He took off the shirt and Meera stammered more. She could hear her mother
scolding her. "The good boys don't run around shirtless. They'll be in
school where they belong." She wasn't sure that the advice applied here,
though, but she couldn't accept that she didn't know what to do with
herself.

"Let me build a fire. You're none too warm, and I'm still soaked through to
the bone. There's no other heat..."

Meera shook her head. Less than five kilometers from the huge house of her
Uncle's, she was standing in a house still heated by a fire, and that got
plumbing just the year before. It didn't fit with her mental geography
putting London and Paris on a little pedastel, rich and sophisticated and
modern. She was used to her mother talking about sending her kids to school
in England, to get them away from the messy city of Mumbai.