Back at the house in Hoofton Road, Applestia dropped Mrs. Highcastle’s big rose-garden hat over the railing into the basement dustbin, where old mare could find it when she went poking to see if anypony had thrown food out, and think what she liked.
The kitchen door was open and when the landpony heard Applestia come in, she called out, “You’re two hours late for dinner, so don’t come whining to me, my filly.”
Applestia went into the kitchen. “Ah couldn’t touch a thing,” she said grandly, although even the word dinner made the juices come to her mouth. As she left 27a Whinnypole Street, she had smelt roasting hay fries and potatoes baking in their jackets and the sweet spicy perfume of apple pie, and almost fainted from desire, right there on the checkerboard tiles of the front hall.
“Is the old colt in?” If he was, she was going to silently trot past his door and get away without telling him where she was going. She owed him nothing. She wanted nothing form him. He wouldn’t miss her. If Jet or Fancypants gave her any money, she might send him some, andhe would be glad that she had gone “to a better world,” as the preachers said, though they didn’t mean Whinnypole Street.
“The old colt?” Mrs. Highcastle shook her purple helmet of a mane carefully, so it wouldn’t come down. “He’s gone off with his crowd of drunkards. Somepony’s birthday they’re going to celebrate. We’ll not see him for three days at least, and nor will the corporation dustcart. I am going to tell you straight, Applestia, if he gets the push, it’s out. Highcastle by name but not by heart, but I won’t be put upon, and if he goes, you go too, and good riddance.”
“Oh, don’t bother about me,” Applestia said. “Ah’m off anyway. Ah shan’t trouble ya no more with my unwelcome company. Ah’m movin’ in with friends.”
“Hoity toity,” said Mrs. Highcastle, obviously thrown off balance. For the first time, Applestia was glad of the professor, rude and conceited and unfeeling as he was. Glad of Fancypants. Glad of the butler and Upper Crust, because of where they lived.
“Does your father know where you’re going?”
“Oh, yes,” lied Applestia.
“He didn’t tell me.” Mrs. Highcaslte could not stand anything to happen, even a fire ten streets away, and not be the first to hear of it. “He knows you owe me money, I suppose.”
“What fer?”
Mrs. Highcastle thought quickly. “Your share in this month’s coal.”
Applestia laughed, right in her face, for if there had been any fires in that house she had felt the heat of none of them. “Here’s my new address then,” she said. “27 a Whinnypole Street. Ya can send me the bill.”
And see if ah’ll pay she thought, running up the stairs, whistling to Azure. The bird and the cage and the paper bag of money were all she took. She had nothing else.
Arriving back at Whinnypole Street in a carriage, she met Fancypants on the front steps, and asked him to pay the fare.
“My word, you’re learning fast,” he said admiringly. “I believe we shall make a lady of you yet.”
Upper Crust gave a short squawk when she saw the bird cage, but it turned out that the butler liked birds, if only to spite Upper Crust. The butler and housekeeper, Applestia soon began to see, waged a kind of underground cold warfare. As housekeeper, Upper Crust thought herself head of the household, and let nopony forget it. So if she said, “The bird goes out,” Nutterville said, “He shall hang in the sunny window in the butler’s pantry,” and bore him off, chirping merrily.
Upper Crust pushed Applestia up the back stairs, pinching her foreleg to relieve her feelings.
“I’m not going to let you meet the rest of the domestic staff before you’ve had a bath.” She took Aplestia into a huge bathroom with a tub that had feet like lion’s claws, and a brass geyser that coughed and rattled and let off a cloud of steam like a locomotive when she turned the knobs.
“A bath? Ah don’t want a bath. Ah had one last month.” A bath was something you took two or three times a winter in the public bathhouse, mostly to get warm. Applestia didn’t think she was going to like Upper crust. She had a motherly shape and round pudgy face like a muffin, but there was nothing else cozy about her.
“And catch me death of cold? Not ah.”
“You’ll have to get used to it. Ladies bathe every day.”
“Ah don’t want to be a lady then.”
“But a lady you shall be,” Upper Crust said firmly, several times in the course of scrubbing Applestia, washing her mane and tying it back in a thick wet ponytail, and fitting her out in a plain pinafore dress that belonged to the housemaid. “A lady you shall be, if it kills us all. As well it may,” she said, planting Applestia in front of a mirror, and standing back to see what she thought of herself. “As well as it may.”
“Oh my stars and garters,” Applestia said peering. “Is that me?”
“Oh my stars,” said upper Crust, allowing herself a smile. “It is.”
The filly who looked at Applestia out of the mirror had big green eyes and thick green mane, a pale yellow coat, and a soft wide mouth that began to curve upward in delight.
“Hey…” she said in wonder. “Ah ain’t bad lookin’.”
“Whose room is this?” There was a chest of drawers, a little armchair, a dressing table, a bed with a flowered spread and three pillows.
“It’s yours.”
“Mine!”
“As long as you keep it clean and tidy,” Upper Crust said. “Otherwise you’ll go down next to the coal hole.” She jabbed a hoof downward as if she were pointing to hell.
“Mine.” There were flowered curtains at the window, and outside, the top branches of a tree, bare against the darkening sky. Three pillows! Applestia could have cried, but she wasn’t going to let the old mare see that it was paradise.
From far below, a gong sounded up the back stairs. “Are you hungry?” Upper Crust asked.
“Starvin.” It was so long since Applestia had eaten anything, she could not remember what it was. Oh yes, that pumpkin pie she had shared with Willow last night before she went to catch the ponies coming out of the opera. Willow! What would he do? He was the only one she minded about.
“You’ll take your meals with us in the servant’s hall of course.”
“Of course.” Applestia had no idea what a servant's hall was. It turned out to be a long, comfortable room in the basement next to the great stone-floored kitchen, with easy chairs before the fire, and a long table set with a white cloth and blue-and-white plates and more knives and forks than anypony could need, unless they were going to steal them.
The butler and the mare servants were sitting at the table. They stared at Applestia, and she stared back at them, feeling her face on fire.
“Here she is,” Upper crust announced. “His lordship’s new experiment.”
Somepony giggled, and she added sharply. “You’ll treat her right, Diamond Mint, and all the rest of you, or you’ll get the back of my hoof across your ear.”
Applestia sat next to the filly who had giggled, a saucy country mare with a very light cyan coat and a lavender and light indigo mane. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, “She won’t eat you.”
“Ah could eat her,” Applestia whispered back. “Or anythin’ right about now.” There was a piece of bread on her plate, and she had to clutch her hooves in her lap to stop herself grabbing it and stuffing it into her mouth.
Upper Crust was saying a long and haughty grace, but at last the little kitchen maid came staggering in with a huge plate of hay fries. The butler began passing out plates, and that was the end of talk, or even thought, for Applestia, as she filled the hungry gap of years.
She was too busy to copy the way the others ate. “Table manners will have to be her first lesson, Mr. Nutterville,” Upper Crust said, as the teapot came in, and Applestia sat back and blew out her cheeks, wondering if she would ever be able to get up.
The butler, he was called Mr. Nutterville down here, very polite, although the professor called him Nutterville or Nutters, said, “If you want the others to treat her right, you’d better do the same yourself.”
Hear, hear! thought Applestia. He was going to be on her side. She sent him a wide smile down the table, and he grinned and winked at her and said, “Keep your chin up, mate,” just like any of her friends in the market.
“What’s that?” She jumped and spilled her tea, as a piercing whistle blew in the room.
“His highness.” Diamond Mint made a face.
Mr. Nutterville went to the speaking tube, which hung from the wall like the one in the professor’s room, removed a whistle from the end of it and said in his refined, upstairs voice, “You blew, sir?”
The distant hollow voice said something, and the butler answered, “Very good, sir,” and put the whistle back for its next deafening performance.
“He wants you upstairs, Miss Applestia.” He pointed at the ceiling and made a solemn face.
She jumped up, and Diamond said, “Don’t get excited, dearie. He’s not the answer to a maiden's prayer.”
They all laughed, and Applestia thought This is going to be a bit of all right. Ah shan’t care how strict or rude them two are up there wit their old lessons. We’ll laugh about them down here and have more fun than they do.
The upstairs room was called the study. The fire was burning in a bright glow, and Jet and Fancypants were in such deep chairs that all she could see of them was their hooves stuck out on the brass fender, a hoof in one chair holding a glass of brandy, a hoof in the other dangling a cigar.
“The young pony, sir.” Nutterville sent her into the room and shut the door behind her. He wasn't going to let his tea get cold, even if hers had to.
“Come here, Applestia. Don’t stand there all night.”
She walked across the carpet and stood on the bearskin rug before the fire. The professor and Fancypants sat bolt upright as if she were the princess come to pay a surprise call.
“By Celestia, you wouldn’t know it was the same filly. When we get you some pretty clothes, you’ll be a knockout,” Fancypants said, screwing the glass round and round in his eye to see more of her.
“Git away, you old ham,” Applestia said, “Ah know yer kind.”
Jet winced. “Seeing her spruced-up exterior, one forgets how vile she still is within. Say, ‘Get away’ Applestia.”
“Git way.”
“No, no. Get a-way.”
“That’s what ah said.”
“Tomorrow, we shall make some recordings of your voice. Then you’ll be able to hear, if you can stand it, just what you sound like. Fancypants and I have mapped out a program for you.” He pointed to a large chart which hung on the wall behind the leather-topped desk. “Lessons begin at nine a.m. sharp.” He pulled himself up out of the deep chair like a stork unfolding from a nest. “Come, I’ll show you some of the apparatus.”
One end of the room turned round a corner, and was lined on three sides with books. Below the books were shelves and tables and trestles and tripods, holding all kinds of strange machinery, with wires and needles and trumpets and snaking tubes, and a weighted stick that raced madly back and forth- tick, tock, tick, tock- when she put a hoof to it.
“Here. What ya goin to do… torture me?”
“If you work hard and do what you’re told,” Jet said, “there won’t be any torture. Except to me,” he added, making the screwed-up pickle face again.
He stopped the tick-tock machine. “That’s a metronome, which is used to get perfect timing. It will also help you with your piano practice.”
“Piano! Ya didn’t say nothin’ about piano.”
“All part of a young lady’s cultural education,” Fancypants said. He got up and went over to the little piano that stood against a wall, with centaurs and Cerberuses painted on its graceful front. “Let’s test your musical ear.” He played a few bars. “What’s that?”
“Oh, shut up. If ya think ah don’t know ‘Celestia Save the Moon’…”
“It happens to be Beethoofen’s Pomp and Circumstance.”
“She’ll come to it, Fancypants. Don’t rush her. After all, there wouldn't be any point to the bet if she weren’t the most ignorant cabbagehead that ever came out of the back slums of nowhere. Excuse me.” He bowed. “Little Apple Acres. Here’s the recording machine, Applestia. The very latest model. You talk into this little receiver here, and that makes the needle print on this wax cylinder as it goes round, and presto! Your voice will come out of this big green horn just as if you were inside the box.”
“Ah never!” Applestia forgot how annoying he was, because the machine was so fascinating. “Ya mean ah could really hear myself?”
“You may regret it. Try something.”
“All right. Anything for a lark. Like me to give ya a song?”
The professor turned a knob, the cylinder began to roll, and Applestia clasped her hooves in front of the pinafore dress which felt so strangely stiff and clean, leaned forward to the receiver and sang one of the songs from the bad old days at the textile factory.
My old colt said, “Follow the van,
And don’t dillydally on the way.”
Off went the van wit me ‘ome packed in it.
Ah followed on wit me ol’ cock linnet.
But ah dillied and dallied,
Dallied and dillied,
Lost me way and don’t know where to roam, oj,
Ya can’t trust a special like an old time copper,
When ya can’t find yer way home!
“Sweet Celestia, I like that!” Fancypants struck a couple of chords on the piano. “How does it go?” He picked up the tune as she sang it again, and they ended up singing together.
Oh, ya can’t trust a special like an old time copper,
When ya can’t find yer way home!
“Well, well! Applestia, we’d make a fortune on the music halls.” Fancypants beamed at her, and mopped his white forehead with a great colored handkerchief.
Applestia was flushed and happy, but the professor clicked off the machine and said, “You’d better get to bed.”
“Ain’t ah goin’ to hear me lovely voice?”
“Tomorrow, perhaps, if you’re a good filly. Remember, nine o’clock sharp, I said. If you’re late late, you will get no lunch.”
Outside on the landing at the top of the stairs, Applestia did something she was to do many many times before the six months were up. She turned and stuck out her tongue as far as it would go at the oak-paneled door of Professor Jet Set’s study.
Nutterville