The Fairy Godmother Read Online Free PDF

young man would marry an old maid of twenty-one who brings him nothing but her two hands and a few housekeeping skills? Unless I dispute it, within days, the magistrates will turn this very house over to the creditors. Even if I do dispute it and win, what am I to do? It won’t be long before Madame Klovis returns—for you surely don’t think that she’ll have any better luck elsewhere in her fortune hunting any more than I do—and I will be back to being her unpaid slave.”
    â€œWell,” Madame Blanche said, blankly, “I suppose that all of that is true….”
    â€œSo there you are,” Elena said, trying to sound determined, and not bleak. “This is my only chance to get away from her. And if I am going to have to spend the rest of my life, mending and tending and cleaning, then I am—by Heaven!—going to be paid for it!”
    And at least I’ll have three meals a day and two suits of clothing a year as well, she reminded herself. Every servant, no matter how lowly, was entitled to that and her bed and board and pay. It would be more than she had ever gotten out of Madame Klovis.
    Madame Blanche took a deep breath, as if she was about to dispute Elena’s view of the situation, then let it all out in a tremendous sigh. “I am afraid, my dear,” she said sadly, “that you are correct. And you are a very brave girl.”
    Elena shook her head. “I am not brave at all,” she replied, and a little of her despair crept into her voice, despite her attempts to keep it out. “I am terrified, Madame Blanche. If I were brave, I would go to the King and find some way to get everything back again. If I were brave, I would reclaimthis house at least, and sell it, and use the money to set myself up in a little cottage somewhere, with a cow, and some chickens and geese, and a little garden of my own. But I am not brave. I am afraid to face all of the creditors and the magistrate, I am too terrified to even think seriously of going to the King. I am running away, Madame Blanche, and I was not even brave enough to face my stepmother and tell her what I am going to do. When she returns, she will find the house has been sold and I am gone, and if I am working for some family here in town, I will hide until she goes again.”
    Madame Blanche regarded her gravely for a long moment, the light from the fireplace casting strange shadows on her face. “You may be right, Elena, in saying that this is the only thing you can do. But I think you are wrong in saying that you are not brave.” She paused. “May I tell Fleur what you have told me?”
    â€œOf course!” Elena replied. “I would be happy to have—” now it was her turn to pause, to choose the right phrase “—her kindly thoughts.”
    â€œAnd I am sure you will have them, my dear,” Madame Blanche said warmly. “Well, I will leave you to make your supper in peace.”
    And she bowed a little, before she turned and left.
    Elena sighed, and put a pat of butter in the skillet to melt. After everything had been taken, there were two things left; there had been wood in the woodshed, and a bucket on the pump. She made and ate her dinner—eggs and bread and a little tea. She cleaned the dishes in the light from the fire.Then she banked the fire until morning, washed her face and hands, and, for lack of anything else to do, went up to bed.
    There were no candles, of course, for even if her stepmother had left any, the creditors would have taken them, so Elena climbed the stairs to her room in the dark, and made up her bed (with the new shawl bundled around her old clothing for a pillow, and the new blanket over the old, tattered ones) by the light of the moon coming in her window. She carefully took off her outer clothing and slid into the bed in her shift, and if the pallet was a little lumpier than it had been, it was also warmer beneath the new