Magnificent Devices 01 - Lady of Devices

settled onto her hand, and Claire felt her feet relax.
    Ah. She had gained the hen’s trust. Now she would not run away to become food for who knew what kind of four- or two-legged predator. She deposited the bird gently on the ground outside, where Rosie immediately began divesting the property of its insect life.
    “She’ll run off,” Snouts said.
    “She will not. We have fed her, you see, and provided a hunting ground. She has no reason to run. Mr. McTavish, would you have pawned the ring this morning if we had not decided to use it?”
    “Aye.”
    “Thank you for not doing so. At least this way we have a chance of getting it back.”
    “Means summat to ya, does it?”
    “It was my great-grandmother’s. The emerald came from the crown of an Indian prince. Or so family legend has it, at least. I should hate to lose something that has come so far and been with us so long.”
    Rosie pounced on a beetle with energy.
    “I’ll do me best,” Snouts said, his voice gruff as he watched the bird. “Ent often a lady trusts me with ’er family hairlooms.”
    Claire smiled at him. “Good luck, Mr. McTavish. You’d best be off now.”
    “What’ll you do?”
    “I shall run the Mopsies through their four times tables once again, and then I must find a way to let my friends know I have not been kidnapped or pushed in the river.”
    “You won’t tell ’em of us? Or cut an’ run?”
    “Of course not. We have an agreement, and it is not yet fulfilled. I shall be here when you return triumphant, you may depend upon it.”
    She had gained Rosie’s trust with a cob of corn and some bread. It would take a prince’s emerald to gain the trust of Snouts McTavish and his gang. But it was a price she was willing to pay if it meant getting her life back again. What shape that life would take was a mystery at the moment. But surely the good Lord could not expect her to waste the talents He had given her by going meekly down to Cornwall to become the wife of some husky lad whose idea of literature was the local cattle prices.
    “I’m ’ungry,” one of the Mopsies announced. “We’ll be back.”
    And before Claire could grab them and remind them that stealing was a crime, she and Tigg had vanished out the front. The remaining Mopsie sat upon the river wall and glared from her to Rosie in a way that told Claire exactly where her suspicions lay.
    “I meant what I said, you know,” Claire informed the child. “No harm shall come to Rosie whilst she is in my care. She has given me her trust, so she will not run away. Nor do you need to stand guard over her.”
    The child blinked at her. “Wot’s ’at?”
    “Say, ‘I beg your pardon’.”
    “I beg yer pardon, wot’s ’at?”
    Claire sighed. “Once a bird gives you her trust, she regards you as a member of her flock. If I were you, I should endeavor to gain Rosie’s trust as well. One cannot have too many members in one’s flock.”
    “I brought ’er a corn even when Jake would’ve et it.”
    “Next time you shall give it to her from your own hand, so that she realizes you are also worthy of her trust.”
    The child eyed her. “Yer a strange mort.”
    “Why should you say that?”
    “Most people just eat chickens and don’t care wot they fink.”
    “Yes, well, no one is eating Rosie. She has a duty to perform and we shall enable her to do it. Just as you do. What is twice three?”
    “I dunno.”
    “Yes, you do. If I have three cobs of corn and you have three cobs, how many do we have to give to Rosie altogether?”
    The wheels ground into motion. “Six. But she’d be sick for sure if she et ’em all at oncet.”
    “She would indeed. However, if she ate only one, how many would be left?”
    “Five.”
    “One for each day of the week. A very satisfactory arrangement for Rosie, I should say, wouldn’t you?”
    “If Snouts wins ’at poker game, we could ’ave ’em.”
    “Let us hope he does, then. Would you do me the honor of telling me your name?”
    The child gazed at her sideways while she studied Rosie, who had found a patch of bare dirt and was busy digging a dust bath. “I’m a Mopsie.”
    “But you must have a Christian name.”
    “I dunno.”
    “You don’t know your name?” Here was a sad situation. Chickens were worthy of names but little girls with sticky fingers were not?
    “I gots a name, I just dunno as I should tell you. Snouts said not if the coppers was to ask.”
    “I am not a copper. And if we are to be