Fortune's Mistress by Mary Chase Comstock Page A

into the garden together, both lost in thought. The sage lady read people very well, it seemed. She had given words to his nebulous awareness that something aside from the obvious was amiss in Mrs. Glencoe’s life. What, he wondered, did Mrs. Waller make of him and his oddities? Gathering broken children, even animals, during his travels and bringing them here. Could she divine the memories that drove him?
    “ I have been thinking,” Mrs. Waller continued, “that it would be a very good thing if her heart were to be lightened before her child arrived ... and that you and she might between you lighten your burdens.”
    He looked at her sharply. What could she mean? Were his emotions that transparent then? And what might she know of his burdens?
    “You have returned with new protégés, I understand,” she went on. “Might they be of a nature to be companions to Mrs. Glencoe? Is there aught she could teach them?”
    “ You are a redoubtable woman, Mrs. Waller,” he said, a good deal relieved. “Perhaps you have hit on the very thing. The little girls I brought back with me are six and eight. They are very quiet— I do not know if they have even learned their letters. Quite likely not, considering the surroundings from which they came. They are orphans, and lived with an old woman who sent them daily into the streets to pick rags.”
    “ Poor little souls,” she murmured.
    “ Not forever,” he assured her. “They do smile quite readily now that they are in the country, so I have begun to hold out a great deal of hope for them.”
    Just then they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of two urchins, their clothes badly torn and faces painted with a suspicious inno cence. “Charlie and George!” the doctor said, shaking his head wearily. “As for these two I can make no such predictions. Come now,” he said, addressing the pair, “what have the two of you been up to?”
    Both boys erupted into a flurry of self-righteous explanations, each attempting to out-do the other in volume and velocity.
    “Enough,” Venables ordered, taking them each by the collar and physically separating them. “One at a time. Come now, George?”
    “ ‘Twas Charlie’s wicked idea, it was,” the child began defensively.
    “ ‘E’s flammin’ you!” the other interrupted with loud indignation. “ ‘Twas him thought of it, and it’s him ‘as got the rent in his britches to prove it!”
    “ And whose fault might that be, I ask you?” George scoffed. “ ‘Twas you, not me, thought of the goat to begin with— “
    “ Perhaps I am better off not knowing what went on,” the doctor muttered.
    “ Then we’ll not plague you with explanations,” Charlie offered generously. “Just leave it alone then, right and tight.”
    “ However, I dare not!” The doctor looked apologetically at Mrs. Waller who, despite the alarm in her eyes, seemed to be hiding a smile behind her handkerchief. “Ah, here is poor Mr. Haggerty, looking like a thunder cloud. Perhaps he can illuminate us.”
    The said Mr. Haggerty was rubbing his fore head, where a lump was now rising. When the doctor came forward to examine the injury, however, he shook his head, saying, “ ‘Tis naught wrong with me but a bump, and, beggin’ your pardons, I’d rather a sore head than a sore arse, like yon knave.” Here, he jerked his head at George. “Next time, p’raps they’ll be wiser and not try their luck at milking a billy goat.”
    Venables felt the corner of his mouth twitch. It would never do for the boys to observe his amusement. Schooling his expression, he com manded them, on pain of his severe wrath, to sit quietly in the curricle and behave themselves. Abashed, he turned to Mrs. Waller. “I pray Mrs. Glencoe does not hear rumors of my charges’ comportment, else I shall never persuade her to consider taking the little girls under her tutelage.”
    “ Should that occur, I happen to know a sure way to her heart,” Mrs. Waller said.
    He