The Fairy Godmother Read Free Page B

tried to ignore the shouting. There was one thingthat she was certain of; there was nothing in her little garret room that was worth taking. If they even bothered to go up there.
    When her father had remarried and brought home his bride and her two daughters, the first thing that Delphinium had done was to claim Elena’s room. Daphne had taken the next-best chamber, and Madame had made over the remaining rooms into sitting rooms for the three of them, except for the one that went to her very superior lady’s maid. Elena had taken a little garret room at the top of the stairs; at least, with the chimney running through the middle of it, it was warm in the winter. When her father had died, they had actually tried to force her out of her garret, claiming that it was needed for Madame’s new assistant lady’s maid, and for a hideously uncomfortable several years, she’d been forced to sleep on the kitchen hearth, giving her a permanently smudged appearance and the nickname in the town of “Ella Cinders.”
    But the maid had eventually decided that a garret room did not suit her lofty standards, and Daphne had to give up her sitting room. Elena got her garret back, and as the family fortune was burned away in a funeral pyre of gowns and fripperies, the servants began to leave.
    â€œWhat would you like in your omelette, my dear?” asked Blanche, breaking into Elena’s reverie. Elena flushed, realizing that she had been standing there, lost in memory, staring at the blank garden wall across from the kitchen door.
    â€œOh, please, Madame, let me—”
    â€œNonsense,” Blanche said firmly. “You have been on yourfeet since before dawn. Now just sit down and let us feed you, and then perhaps we can help you make some plans.”
    â€œMushrooms, then, please?” she replied, “If you have them.”
    Fleur laughed. “Elena, please! Fancy us , without mushrooms!” And the two women set about making a handsome breakfast for all three of them. There were only three servants in their household—a man-of-all-work, a housekeeper, and a little maid to help the housekeeper. No cook—Blanche liked to cook—no lady’s maid, no coachman, no great state at all. Certainly nothing like the small army that Madame had thought needful, an army that Elena had eventually come to replace all by herself. Then again, their little house was half the size of Elena’s.
    Madame Blanche was an excellent cook; her husband had been a very plump and happy man with her as his wife. It was, by far, the best meal that Elena had tasted since the last time that Fleur and Blanche had smuggled her over to eat with them.
    An ugly shouting match began on the other side of the wall as they were finishing their tea. “Oh, my,” Fleur said, cocking her head to one side. “I believe Monsieur Beavrais has discovered that he has come too late. I hope this doesn’t put my chickens off laying.”
    â€œAnd speaking of chickens,” Blanche said, firmly taking the reins of conversation into her hands. “If you’re going to be left with nothing, as good neighbors, I cannot even think of allowing you to starve. I think we could spare you three hens and a rooster, which would give you three eggs a day. I doubt that the creditors will bother to tear up your kitchengarden, so once that begins to produce, you will have eggs and vegetables.”
    â€œYou can probably trade the vegetables for bread,” Fleur added helpfully. “And perhaps you could take in washing? With no one there but you, there won’t be nearly as much work. Everyone knows what a hard worker you are, and that you were the one that has done everything in that house that Jacques wouldn’t do.”
    â€œPerhaps,” Elena agreed, although she already had ideas of her own on that score. But she let them rattle on, reveling in the fact that here it was midmorning, and she was