Free A Loyal Companion by Bárbara Metzger

girls. Soon I had them laughing and playing without arguing. Of course, I was wearing bonnets and taking tea with a bunch of glass-eyed dolls and giving Baby rides on my back. Worse, I had to pretend I couldn't find three giggly little girls smelling of milk and porridge when I was It, but no one from the old neighborhood would ever know, and it was all for a good cause. At night after Baby was asleep, I had two little bodies pressed against me while the major read nursery tales. So what if they were stories I'd heard suchamany times? Gen and Benice wouldn't sit in his lap yet, but they didn't mind that we crept closer to his chair every evening. Two more Little Penny Partridges and we'd be at his knees.
    Major Conover was a harder bone to chew. He was too restless to stay in the house, but came home in a blacker mood if some old acquaintance snubbed him. When the children were abed he'd help me down the stairs and we'd go to the library, where there were so many books, Miss Sonia and I could have spent every rainy day from now till kingdog come. He never read out loud. The major mostly stared at the fire and poured wine from the decanter.
    Sometimes when we went out to the back garden he'd throw rocks and sticks as far toward the rear wall as he could. Now, there's a cruel man, I thought at first, until I realized he didn't intend a three-legged dog to go fetch. He was just angry. I felt bad that I couldn't stay to set him to rights, but I had a job of my own to do. Miss Sonia must be worried.
    I whimpered, yes I did, wanting to go home. The major asked if my leg hurt
and poured me a saucer of brandy. I could stay a day or two more, I decided,
recovering my strength before I had to face that London maelstrom. Meanwhile I'd
see what I could do to get Major Conover's ducks in a row. Those slovenly maids, the cook who stole, the nursemaid who spent more time with the footmen than with the children, the castaway butler, they would all feel my wrath. That was the least I could do.
    Miss Sonia could do more. I made the obvious connection, then rejected the thought. One and one did not always equal two; sometimes they just stayed that way, one and one. The major did not fill the bill. He was a soldier and a sir, not a my lord, so Grandmama would be unhappy. He wasn't well to pass, judging from the run-down house and his ill-fitting uniform, so Squire might object. He gambled in low kens, Blue Ruin on his breath, saying, "Blister it, what else is there to do?" He used bad language, was cow-handed with children, and smelled bad from the cigarillos he smoked. He was so used to giving orders that he'd never make a manageable, complacent sort of husband, and he'd never be a good dancer, with that limp. Miss Sonia loved to dance. He wasn't even handsome enough, with lines on his face and a scar on his cheek, and he never talked about going to the country at all, only Portugal. Besides, I didn't even know if he was honest. He hadn't given me back yet, had he? And he never smiled.
     
    "Blackie must be ready for more exercise, girls, the way he's bothering the servants. What do you say we take him across the street to the square for a run?" Major Conover was almost trampled in answer, as his nieces ran to find mittens and have their bonnets tied. He wished some of the eagerness were for his company, not the dog's, but he was a little heartened when Benice paused, halfway out the door, and called back, "Hurry, Uncle Darius."
    He followed down the steep front steps of Ware House as quickly as he could on a leg that refused to heal, his cane in one hand, the lead Robb had fashioned for the dog obviously de trop in his other. "Do not cross the—" he started to command from the marble landing, scowling that the nursemaid was nowhere in sight. Then he noted how Blackie put his body in front of the girls at the edge of the walkway, keeping them back until there was a break in the traffic. The dog was a better nanny than any he could have