Ric Arnold

Cinderella of Love

CHAPTER I

Myriam!

Mrs. Cornavin's shrill voice startled the girl. She whisked off under a pile of linen the exciting novel she was reading, «Love's Cinderella», and tried her best to look indifferent and wholly absorbed in her embroidering.

The door flew open and Mrs. Cornavin popped in, not unlike a wicked Jack-in-the-box.

A most unprepossessing female she was… Tall, raw boned, lanky as a stale kipper. With her spectacled, sharp-edged, inquisitive nose, her small restless eyes, her wrinkled old skin and flaccid dewlaps, her shabby grey hair drawn back tight into a horse tail, Myriam thought her the very picture of a witch.

She snapped tartly:

«Well! Myriam, would you mind answering when I call you?»

Myriam looked up, wondering. She looked up as a squirrel peeps over a nut, and there was a twinkle in her golden eyes.

«Did you call my aunt?»

«Yes indeed, and you heard it. But you were daydreaming as usual. For Heaven's sake when will you stop thinking the whole world is at your knees? Don't keep forgetting you owe your relations everything you have. I picked you, a charity girl, and brought you up as my own girls and there's your thanks for it, without me you'd be in the gutter as… as…»

She sought long for the appropriate word. «As a woman of the streets». And there's your thanks for it, you should be grateful to me.