Ella Enchanted Read Free Page A

continued. “Are these your lovely daughters?”
    “They are my treasures. This is Hattie, and this is Olive. They are off to finishing school in a few days.”
    Hattie was older than I, by about two years. “Delighted to make your acquaintance,” she said, smiling and showing large front teeth. She held her hand out to me as though she expected me to kiss it or bow over it.
    I stared, uncertain what to do. She lowered her arm, but continued to smile.
    Olive was the one I’d bumped. “I’m glad to meet you,” she said, her voice too loud. She was about my age. The furrows of a frown were permanently etched between her eyes.
    “Comfort Eleanor in her grief,” Dame Olga told her daughters. “I want to talk with Sir Peter.” She took Father’s arm, and they left us.
    “Our hearts weep for you,” Hattie began. “When you bellowed at the funeral, I thought what a poor thing you are.”
    “Green isn’t a mourning color,” Olive said.
    Hattie surveyed the room. “This is a fine hall, almost as fine as the palace, where I’m going to live someday. Our mother, Dame Olga, says your father is very rich. She says he can make money out of anything.”
    “Out of a toenail,” Olive suggested.
    “Our mother, Dame Olga, says your father was poor when he married your mother. Our mother says Lady Eleanor was rich when they got married, but your father made her richer.”
    “We’re rich too,” Olive said. “We’re lucky to be rich.”
    “Would you show us the rest of the manor?” Hattie asked.
    We went upstairs and Hattie had to look everywhere. She opened the wardrobe in Mother’s room and, before I could stop her, ran her hands over Mother’s gowns. When we got back to the hall, she announced, “Forty-two windows and a fireplace in every room. The windows must have cost a trunkful of gold KJs.”
    “Do you want to know about our manor?” Olive asked.
    I didn’t care if they lived in a hollow log.
    “You’ll have to visit us and see for yourself,” Hattie said in response to my silence.
    We stood near the side table, which was loaded with mountains of food, from a whole roast hart with ivy threaded through its antlers to butter cookies as small and lacy as snowflakes. I wondered how Mandy had had time to cook it all.
    “Would you like something to eat?”
    “Ye—” Olive began, but her sister interrupted firmly.
    “Oh, no. No thank you. We never eat at parties. The excitement quite takes away our appetites.”
    “My appetite—” Olive tried again.
    “Our appetites are small. Mother worries. But it looks delicious.” Hattie edged toward the food. “Quail eggs are such a delicacy. Ten brass KJs apiece. Olive, there are fifty at least”
    More quail eggs than windows.
    “I like gooseberry tarts,” Olive said.
    “We mustn’t,” Hattie said. “Well, maybe a little.”
    A giant couldn’t eat half a leg of deer plus a huge mound of wild rice and eight of the fifty quail eggs and go back for dessert. But Hattie could.
    Olive ate even more. Gooseberry tarts and currant bread and cream trifle and plum pudding and chocolate bonbons and spice cake — all dribbled over with butter rum sauce and apricot sauce and peppermint sauce.
    They brought their plates close to their faces so their forks had the shortest possible distance to travel. Olive ate steadily, but Hattie put her fork down every so often to pat her mouth daintily with her napkin. Then she’d tuck in again, as avidly as ever.
    It was disgusting to watch. I looked down at a throw rug that used to lie under Mother’s chair. Today it had been moved near the food. I had never concentrated on it before.
    A hound and hunters chased a boar toward a fringe of scarlet wool. As I stared, I saw movement. Wind stirred the grass by the boar’s feet. I blinked and the movement stopped. I stared again and it started again.
    The dog had just bayed. I felt his throat relax. One of the hunters limped, and I felt a cramp in his calf. The boar gasped for