Free Fortune's Lead by Barbara Perkins

on—oh, I don’t know, I could hold it up out of the water. Pa’s sure to complain if I don’t look reasonably clean. Stay and talk to me,’ Essie added casually, beginning to peel off the rest of her clothes.
    ‘Oh, and you might pull my boots off for me, will you? Should’ve asked Phil to come up and do it.’
    ‘Who’s Phil?’
    ‘Phil Mott. Mottie’s son. He’s sixteen—works in the stables.’
    I restrained myself from suggesting she couldn’t very well have asked Phil to come up here—since after all she hadn’t—and took hold of the small foot held out to me. It was extremely muddy, but Esther didn’t seem to expect me to mind, and a hearty heave detached her from first one boot, then the other. With the memory that I was supposed to be making friends with Esther I decided to follow her suggestion of staying while she had her bath—and picked up the clothes she dropped absently around her on the floor. She gave me, irrespective of my avowed disinterest in horses, a graphic description of her day’s hunting: what I could understand of it sounded terrifying. She threw out a request—more of a command—to wash her back for her, and I couldn’t avoid noticing that her own idea of washing was to get the worst of the mud off and ignore what might not show. I was feeling distinctly nannyish as (again commanded) I held out a towel for her to step into as she came out of a grime-streaked bath. She wandered away with the towel round her into her bedroom, and I cleaned round the bath, out of habit. When I went to join her she was wriggling into some clothes, taking little notice of her injured arm, so that I felt obliged to offer a warning.
    ‘Mind you don’t start it bleeding again. Perhaps I’d better fix you up a sling for this evening, when you’ve got your things on—’
    ‘Oh no, you don’t! I’m keeping it hidden—when I’ve got this sweater on the bandage won’t show.’ She turned round to face me, underlip caught between her teeth, her enormous brown eyes suddenly threatening. ‘You’re not going to sneak on me—understand? I don’t want to hear one word out of you!’
    ‘Esther—’
    ‘Don’t interrupt! Nobody asked you to interfere—and you won’t, get that? If I find you’ve told Pa, or Mottie, or anyone , I’ll—I’ll set the dogs on you!’
    Startling as it might be to find a casually friendly young girl turning abruptly into a tough, commanding little madam; disconcerting as it might be to have been accepted one minute and spoken to like a very inferior housemaid the next; I had too many years as a Staff Nurse behind me to stand for that. I gave her back look for look. ‘You’ll—what?’ I asked in my most arctic voice.
    ‘You won’t have seen the dogs yet because they’re out. They’re Kev’s, and they’re huge,’ she said in the same threatening voice.
    ‘I don’t care if they’re Dobermann Pinschers trained to kill. Polite requests I might stand for—threats I don’t. If you want me to go straight downstairs and broadcast the fact that you’ve hurt yourself to the entire district, you’re going the right way about it!’ And that, I thought with a sinking feeling, was the end of any hopes I might have of making friends with Esther. I went on looking her in the eye nevertheless. To my surprise, after she had considered me for a moment to see if I meant it, the toughness vanished and she let out a gurgle of pleased laughter.
    ‘Oh, good! You’re not the blanket type after all! I was afraid you were, in there—you would keep doing things for me!—but we might make something of you after all! I don’t know where Pa found you, but you’ll do!’
    ‘Thank you very much,’ I said coldly. ‘Whether I’ll make something of you—after that—seems to be more in question!’
    ‘Oh, don’t stand on your dignity. I’ll apologize—okay? I had to try it on, that’s all.’ She was cajoling now, grinning at me with mischievous twinkle in her eyes