“We have taught her how to speak,” the professor said, talking across Applestia as if she were not there. “Now I think, my dear Fancypants, we had better teach her to listen.”
It was breakfast time on the day after the races. Applestia was sitting at her usual place halfway down the long mahogany table. Jet and Fancypants, like an allergic married couple, sat on opposite ends, so that Uncle Nutters and Diamond Mint walked half a mile each meal to serve them.
“What’s that you say?” Fancypants brought a hoof up to his ear.
“Sorry, mouthful of hay.”
The two stallions were eating their usual enormous breakfast of eggs and haysh browns, and gallons of tea in giant cups like soup bowls, but Applestia could eat nothing. She sat humbly between them with her eyes cast down, a naughty foal waiting to be punished.
Nothing much had been said yesterday. In the carriage on the way home, they laughed and spoke French to each other, which meant they were talking no good about Applestia. When they got home she said she had a headache, which was true, and went to bed before dinner.
When Diamond Mint came up eager for news, she found the door bolted and Applestia pretending to be asleep.
This morning she would get it. This would be the end. Her last breakfast and she wouldn’t eat a thing! What a waste.
“No, thanks,” she said to the scrambled egg and pancakes. Diamond Mint looked sorry for her, although she would gobble it herself in the serving pantry beyond the swing door.
What was the professor saying? He raised his voice and repeated down the length of white tablecloth, “I said, now we must teach her to listen.”
“Teach?” Applestia raised her head.
“Every living creature, even a beetle or a fish, knows how to listen. Only a chump like you has to be taught.”
“Taught?”
“Don’t keep repeating like a machine. What’s the matter with you today, girl? You look like a sick cow.”
“But I thought you weren’t going to teach me anymore.” She looked down at the tablecloth, blurred through her tears.
“You thought you knew it all?”
“I thought you were throwing me out,” she whispered, and Fancypants called testily. “What… what’s she say?”
“Throw you out…. with the Grand Galloping Gala six weeks away and all Canterlot agog to meet you?”
“To laugh at me. I…. ah let ya down. Ah shamed ya in front of all them swells.” She was talking broad cockney again. Might as well. She’d soon be back to it.
“No, you didn’t, you stupid girl. They loved it.”
“Didn’t they guess then, that I was only a common apple mare?” She looked up at him with shining new hope, as if he were a god.
“Of course not. After Fancypants whistled you off to the carriage, I explained about this cockney play you’d been rehearsing. In Northhooferland. You were saying bits of your part. They thought it was terrific. Such a clever mimic. So much vitality.” He imitated Mrs. Set’s drawly voice. “My mother is wild to see you again. She’s going to take you shopping, and to the art galleries, and to Phoenix’s for tea… oh, you’re It, Little Applestia!”
“Nah.” The hope died into reality. He was just an ordinary stallion again, with a raw morning chin, and egg on his top lip. “Ah can’t do it. That wasn’t no play-actin’. That was me.”
“That was I.”
“Ah… me…. what’s the difference? Ah am only a little cockney filly.”
“You’re not! You’re Little Applestia. My Little Applestia.” He reached out and took her hoof.
“It’s no good. Ah’ll have to chuck it. Ah can’t go ter the ball.”
“You can, and you will, and you’ll be the loveliest mare there. You’ll see. Oh, come on, Applestia, for my sake. I believe in you. Won’t you believe in me?”
She nodded. He could charm the wallpaper off the wall, that stallion.
“What the hay are you two whispering about?” Fancypants threw down his napkin and got up. “If you’re talking to me, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”
“We’re saying we’ve got six weeks to do six years of work.” Jet got up. “Come on everypony. Lessons.”
Suddenly hungry, Applestia stayed behind to snatch a piece of toast. When she got to the study door, she heard Jet say exultantly, “We’ll do it!”
Not, “She’ll do it.” Oh yes, charm the wallpaper all right, but he was still the sculptor Pygmalion, she still Galatea, his puppet: valuable only as an experiment, not for herself.
So naturally, when Scarling Phoenix came calling, loaded with violets and love, she encouraged him. He was allowed to visit her in the drawing room, where he sat adoring her with his eyes and laughing at everything she said, but Jet would not let him take her for a walk, or for a drive in his deluxe double-carriage.
“Why not?” Applestia protested. “He loves me for myself. I’m not a doll to him. I’m a real mare.”
“Doll or mare, you’re not going out alone with him,” Jet said. “He’s too much of an ass to keep you out of trouble.”
“Don’t you speak like that about my stallion,” Applestia said sharply. “Are you jealous?”
“Oh, shut up,” Jet said. “Get on with the dictation.”
As well as teaching her other important tasks, like how to toast his crumpets in front of the study fire, he had taught her how to write letters, and part of her work was to read and sort and answer the letters that came to him from all over Equestria. Upper Crust and the maids were forbidden under threats of burning alive to touch his papers, or even to dust. But he had taught Applestia to take care of his desk and the file drawers and the tottering piles of work from his university students, which he was going to attend to someday.
One afternoon when Applestia was sorting papers, Mrs. Set came to the house in a swatched dress of Paisley silk.
“I didn’t know she was your secretary, Jet.”
“I just let her fool about. What do I need a secretary for?”
He waved a hoof at the chaos of books and notes and manuscripts on the desk. “Where the hay is the note I made about the musical sequence of the milkman’s morning hymn of, “Milko-o-?”
“You stuck it in a picture frame.” Applestia pulled out a scribbled scrap of paper.
“She seems to be very useful to you,” the professor’s mother said. She had a jokey sort of voice, so that you were never sure if she were laughing or serious.
“She has her issues.”
“But not today,” his mother said. “Today we are going shopping.”
“To Whiteley’s?” Applestia loved to go shopping at Whiteley’s.
“The Universal Provider?” Mrs. Set wrinkled her aristocratic nose, as if Whiteley’s was bad drains. “They say, you know, that Brightness Whiteley once boasted he could supply anything in Equestria. So a customer asked for a white elephant. And got it. No doubt an excellent store for elephants, Appleshine, but for a ball gown, there’s only Hoity Toity’s Maison Francoise.”
“Oh goodness, Mrs. Set, how glorious!”
Applestia and Mrs. Set were becoming good friends. She was not nearly as alarming as Applestia had feared. She was not alarming at all, like Scarling’s mother, or the hard and coldly elegant ladies they met when they were shopping, or having meringues and pralin ices at the tearoom, or listening to military bands in the park, or any of the things that were right for a country mare from Northhooferland to do. Although she had been born and bred among classy ladies like these, Mrs. Set laughed at their artificial airs. She was a rebel, like her son. You could see where he got it from.
If she had not promised to keep the secret, Applestia might have been tempted to tell Mrs. Set the truth. Perhaps she would, after the gala, when the best was won and she was accepted everywhere by the lordliest in the land. It would be the sort of joke Mrs. Set would enjoy. But she was too loose-tongued with the secret, so Applestia had to be careful to stick to the imaginary family history, in which Jet and Fancypants had drilled her dozens of times.
“Who are you?”
“Twinkling Appleshine.”
“Who is your father?”
“Sir Shining Cornelius Appleshine, ex-President of the Northhooferland Rubber Company.”
“Appleshine? That’s a weird sort of name, my dear young lady.”
This was the point of the lesson at which Applestia usually started to giggle. She had to pull down her mouth and think of something sad, before she could answer. “The name descends to us from our ancestor, Sir Frosty Appleshine. So called because although he lived up in the cold regions of Northhooferland, he was able to sell apples to all of the townsfolk and make quite a profit.”
“Why hasn’t your mother taken you anywhere?”
A sigh. “She not strong, poor Mother. All that time in the East, you know. Her blood is as thin as water, the doctors say. We live very quietly in a small manor house in Northhooferland. Only a hundred acres of land, but my father, like Sir Frosty, does not believe in killing even a pheasant, so there are no shooting parties.”
“Your mother comes originally from Horsefolk, you say?” Mrs. Set asked, as they drove to the fashion salon of Hoity Toity in Hayfair. “And your father from Durhoof?”
“That’s… I mean, yes.”
“That’s right” was one of the things you were not supposed to say, for some daft reason. It was ridiculous, the whole thing, but Applestia had worked at her new language so long and so hard that she could even detect a small mistake made by a society lady who was not as grand as she pretended.
“And yet, you know,” mused Mrs. Set, “there is some charming quality in your speaking voice I can’t quite place. A touch of French blood, perhaps?” (The professor had got his gift for accents from her, as well as his rebelliousness.)
“That must be from my Great-aunt Sherry,” Applestia invented hastily. “In wines, her family was.” Fairly pickled in wine, she had been, so it wasn't quite a lie, although the only French Aunt Sherry she knew was cognac.
“Whereabouts in France?”
Before Applestia could get tangled in her own inventions, they arrived at the salon, and the next two hours were a dream of satins and laces and chiffons and pearls, and French mares (relations of Aunt Sherry?) crying, “But, mademoiselle, ees bee-oo-tee-fool!”
Jet and Fancypants were not allowed to see the gown until the evening of the ball.
When Applestia came down to the drawing room, where they were formally awaiting her, she found all the servants lined up before the door in a guard of honor. The cook, the kitchenmaid, the housemaid, Daimond Mint, Upper Crust, Uncle Nutters... they all embraced her and wished her luck. It was a moment of great emotion. Applestia felt that all her life had been leading toward this one evening.
“If that Scarling don’t pop the question tonight,” Diamond Mint whispered as she kissed her, “he’s a bigger fool than he looks.”
But that was not the excitement that gripped Applestia’s hear so that she could hardly speak. It was something much more important. It was proving of herself. Perhaps tonight she would find out who she really was.
Who am I?
As if in answer, Uncle Nutters flung open the door, flung out his narrow chest, and flung his grandest master-of-ceremonies into the drawing room.
“Miss Twinkling Appleshine!”
Applestia stepped forward into the middle of the room and stood, knowing what she looked like, waiting to be told she was beautiful.
Jet and Fancypants were standing by the white marble fireplace, splendid in their swallowtail coats and white waistcoats, a whole kaleidoscope of medals decorating one side of Fancypants’s chest. For a moment, they did not move or speak. “Struck dumb by beauty.” The phrase popped into Applestia’s head, and her mouth twitched, but she would not let it giggle. Then Fancypants’s monocle fell out and he lunged forward like a hippopotamus who has seen its mate.
“Applestia,” he said, very moved. “Oh, my dear girl, you are the most divine vision that ever delighted these wicked old eyes.”
“Thank you, Fancypants.” She tapped him lightly with her fan, as girls like Saddleson’s Maud did when they were flirting.
“What do you say, Jet, what do you say? Would you believe she…”
The professor was pacing toward her, his head down. He circled her once, twice, eyes narrowed, inspecting it all: the floating white and silver dress, all sewn with pearls and diamanté flowers, the tiara in the shining coiled mane and the diamonds round her white throat, that were no less dazzling for being hired for the night.
“Mareseille Bridge is falling down…” Softly he started to sing the old rhyme he had so often forced her to say through a mouthful of marbles.
…falling down, falling down.
Mareseille Bridge is falling down,
My Fair Pony!
It was the nicest compliment he had ever paid her.
“But I can’t do it, you know.” Applestia stood before them, trembling. “They’ll see through me, like they should have done at the races. I can’t do it.”
The Grand Galloping Gala had hung before her like a glittering treasure, beckoning her on. Now suddenly she wanted to turn and run and hide and be a nopony.
“You can do it.” Jet put his hoof on her shoulder to stop her shaking. “You can do anything.”
Outside in the hall, a clamor of loud mouth and loud boots. Nutterville opened the door and said, of all things, “Miss Applestia’s father is here.”
“Oh, no!”
Oh, no, not now. Why did he have to come now? But Jet said, “Bring him in, bring him in. A bit of comic relief. Just what we need. Welcome, my dear Apple Cider.” For Applestia’s father was already pushing in past Nutterville, not being a stallion to be kept standing in the hallways. “And who have I the honor….?”
For Little Apple Cider was not alone. A few paces behind, in a purple bonnet and cape, jaw clenched like a fist to show she was not impressed by the address, was his landpony, Mrs. Highcastle.
“This here is the mare I told you about. Mrs. Lyrica…. Sweet Celestia…” He took a second look at the vision in the middle of the room. “Applestia!”
“If you’ve come here for bits,” she said in her carefully cultured voice, “you’re wasting your time.”
“That’s a nice thing for a father to hear from the lips of his only foal.” He appealed to the room. “It don’t look like me daughter. It don’t sound like me daughter. But so help me, it’s the sort of thing me daughter would say.”
“I know you,” Applestia said, aware that she was saying the old kind of things to him, but in a new kind of voice. “You’re up to something.”
“It so happens,” her father said with dignity, “that the only thing I’m up to is matrimony.” He drew Mrs. Highcastle forward, the hatpins in her purple bonnet bristling like a porcupine. “Your new stepmother. Professor Jet. Fancy what’s-his-name. My fiancée.”
“Your what?!” Applestia’s jaw hung.
“I come here to tell you that Mrs. H. is going to do me the honor of becoming Mrs. L. Nothing for it,” he whispered hoarsely to Applestia, under cover of the general commotion of congratulations and the pouring of wine to celebrate. “Four months behind on me rent, she’s got me trapped. Though if you could slip me 200 bits, I might still….”
“The bride and groom!” Jet raised his glass.
Mrs. Highcastle drank with little sipping pecks, like a finicky hen. Mr. Little tipped back his glass and smacked his lips gloomily.
“Why’s that filly dressed up like her own funeral?” he wanted to know.
“I’m going to a ball, Father.”
“Ah’m goin’ to a ball, Father.” He mimicked her old voice. “What do you think of that, Lyrica?”
“I wouldn’t know her,” Mrs. Highcastle said, then added sharply, in case that might be taken as flattery, “That dress is cut very low.”
“Father from Stalliongrad, mother Manehattan…. no, Trottingham,” Jet murmured automatically, and Lyrica said, “I beg yours!” and raked him up and down with her military eye.
“I’m forced to stay,” Little Apple Cider was walking round Applestia as if she were a painting at auction, “you’ve done a good job, professor. Cinderella at the ball, eh?”
“Tonight Applestia makes her entry into society at the Grand Galloping Gala.”
“You’ll never get away with it.” Apple Cider shook his head with the wisdom of a stallion who has tried to get away with many things, and failed. “They’ll rumble her, you’ll see. Dresses, jools, sparklers in her mane…. she’s still a plain street mare, when all’s said and done. Just because you’ve taught her to speak all la-di-da don’t make no difference.”
“But it does! Her speech makes her a different pony, don’t you see? That’s what I’m trying to prove. It’s the bridge across the huge gulf that separates class from class, soul from soul.”
“I got a nice one of them,” Apple Cider said. “That balmy old millionaire in Amareica, what yer wrote to, he likes my soul so much, he wants me to go over there and give a talk about right and wrong.”
“Why don’t you?”” Applestia asked. Anything would be better than marrying his landpony.
“She wouldn’t let me.” he jerked his head at Mrs. Highcastle who did not like the wine or the turn of the conversation, and was on her way out. “She’d have the seaports watched, have me arrested at the gangway. Well, ta-ta for now, girl. After tonight, I may see yer back in the market. Bring me one of them diamonds bright, if yer can get away with it.” He blew Applestia a kiss, waved a hoof at the professor, and saluted Fancypants.
“How do?” he said genially to Mrs. Set, meeting her in the hall in old-rose brocade, ablaze with family jewels.
“How do?” she said, unsurprised. You never knew who you would meet at Jet’s. “What market?” she asked, gliding into the drawing room, but was too entranced with the sight of Applestia to notice that nopony answered.
In the carriage she told them casually, “I understand Princess Celestia as well as Princess Luna will be at the gala.”
The princess! Applestia went white and almost jumped out of the car, but Jet rubbed his hooves and said, “Just what we need.”
“And you’ll be able to meet that marvelous Hoofarian everypony talks about. The great speech expert, Professor Harmony. He goes everywhere with ambassadors, because he can spot an impostor, they say, as soon as he opens his mouth. He knows almost as much about languages as you do, dear. You’ll have so much in common.”
“Won’t we?” Jet looked a little sick, and Fancypants groaned under his breath. “Just our blithering luck.”
“Nonsense. have you ever met royalty before?”
The Grand Galloping Gala was in the vast white castle of Princess Celestia, with a blaze of lights and flowers and polished floors, and a great many handsome coltservants whom Applestia thought were guests, until Jet poked her in the side for smiling at them. The great ballroom was at the bottom of a wide curving staircase. You had to trot down it alone, while the handsomest coltservant of all, in a scarlet jacket and white leg breeches, roared your name to wake the dead.
“Lord and Lady Noteworthy!”
“Sir Davenport and Lady Dainty Dove!”
“Misses Rarity and Twilight Sparkle!”
“His excellency Count Elle Cuisine!”
“I can’t…” Applestia shrank back, and met the stern waistcoat of Jet, cutting off her retreat.
“Get down there,” he snarled out of the side of his mouth, “or I’ll send you back to your stepmother.”
She walked forward, gave her name.
“Miss Twinkling Appleshine!”
The ballroom held its breath. It seemed that all the faces looked up, like flowers turning to the sun. It seemed that all the crystal drops in the great chandeliers shed sparkling tears of gladness. It seemed that the band struck up a triumphal march just for her, as she paced down the stairs and touched hooves with the ambassador and his wife, and curtsied low to the Princess of the sun, a slender white alicorn with a cotton-candy like flowing mane. So this was royalty!
Scarling was there, of course. He had got himself an invitation when he found out Applestia was going. His mother was in full sail as usual, billowing across the floor in waltz time in a lavender organdy rig about thirty years too young for her. Scarling was waiting behind a pillar to spring out at Applestia and stammer, “I say, Miss Twinkling, you look smashing. You must give me all the dances on your p-p-p-program.”
“Now, now, my boy, don’t be selfish.” Jet took Applestia round the waist himself. “To get your sea legs,” he murmured in her ear, keeping her in the middle of the crowded floor until he saw how she went.
“How did she go?” Fancypants whispered anxiously when they joined him in a bower of potted palms under the balcony.
“Like a bird,” said Jet. “Those dancing lessons are worth every cent you’re going to pay for them.”
“If I pay.” He looked gloomy. “I’ve just seen that villain Harmony.”
“How does he look?”
“Like a black bear. And he was staring at Applestia as if she were a pot of honey.”
“I’ll go and scout out the lie of the land. Here you are, young colt.” As Scarling came hopefully up, the professor passed over Applestia’s hoof with a flourish. “She’s all yours.”
“I wish you were,” Scarling said, as he danced her away. “Golly, Miss Twinkling, you turkey tort like an angel.”
“I’ve asked you a thousand times to call me Appleshine,” she said loftily. She was not afraid any more. She was Cinderella in her glory, on wings in fairyland. But she kept glimpsing at princes much more charming than the chinless one who held her as cautiously as fragile china. It seemed a waste to be in a glittering dress at a glittering gala and have only Scarling, whom she could have any day, perched on the sofa guffawing at her jokes.
When the music stopped, he took her out to walk on the terrace. It was a perfect night. Beyond the lighted terrace, the dark trees and bushes of the Gala garden bloomed with tiny colored lanterns. Romantic. And all she had was Scarling, asking, “Say some of that funny slang for me, Miss….er…. Appleshine.”
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s not allowed. Don’t bother me.”
She turned away from him, but he picked up her gloved hoof from the balustrade. “Be nice to me,” he pleaded, and she was reminded with a jolt of poor Willow with his thatch of blue mane and his empty blue eyes. Why did she always get the soppy, doglike ones?”
“I s-s-say.” Scarling struggled wetly to give voice to his feelings. “Wouldn’t it be s-s-simply ripping if you and I got hitched?”
“No,” she said unkindly. Some proposal! “It wouldn’t.”
“I’ll sit on your doorstep. You’ll fall over me every time you come out.”
“I’ll go out the back.”
“I’ll sit there till you say yes.”
“You’re going to have an awfully cold winter,” she said briskly. “Don’t be such a bore, Scarling. Let’s dance. That’s something you do quite well, at least.”
“Golly…. thanks.” You could not even insult him.
When they came around to the opposite corner, Jet went, “Psst! Psst!” like a spy, and beckoned her from under the balcony.
“Your mother wants you.” She pushed Scarling in the opposite direction, and joined Jet and Fancypants among the potted palms.
“You’re doing splendidly,” Jet reported. “The ambassador and his wife say they are enchanted with you, and so does the Princess. Now they’ve got this blasted bearded Hoofarian interested, and he wants to meet with you.”
She nodded, eyes sparkling, silver slipper tapping to the music. Ponies glanced at her admiringly as they danced by. She felt equal to anything.
“Avoid him,” the Professor said dramatically, “at all costs. He’s out to sink us. I’ve had a chat with him. He’s brilliant, but he’s crooked. He teaches ponies new voices to disguise their real identity…”
“Like you with me.” She giggled.
“…and then demands money not to give them away.
“Blackmail,” Fancypants said darkly.
Between themselves and Scarling, they kept her away from him until just before supper. Then a servant came to Jet. “Telephone call for you, Professor. Urgent.” And almost immediately, a page pony came to tell Fancypants the same thing.
“Let’s get some grub,” Scarling said in his romantic way, but a great grizzly of a pony with a wide black beard that reached halfway to the floor was bowing before Applestia.
“Allow me to present myself, my dear Miss Appleshine. Professor Vocaliz Harmony, from Hoovapest, your partner for the supper.”
Applestia looked round in a fluster, but there was only moonfaced Scarling, letting her go to her doom without lifting a hoof. Offering her his foreleg, Harmony steered her toward the buffet. To pull away or make a fuss would be worse than to go with him. She held up her head and tried to look as if he were her choice for supper, as he nodded and smiled and greeted ponies and introduced her: The famous Miss Appleshine.”
“Why am I famous?” she asked when they reached the long buffet, which had enough hors d’oeuvres and desserts on it to feed all the Market Square ponies for a year.
“Because you are beautiful, and also mysterious. Everypony vant to know: ‘Who is she?’ I alone shall discover.”
“You know who I am,” she said. “I’m Twinkling Appleshine.”
“Aha.” He put a hoof to his nose and winked at her, like a sinister goblin. “Now let us see…. pheasant in aspeec…. saddle of venison…. lobster salad…” He filled her plate with exquisite food, and brought her champagne.
“If you’re such a language expert,” she said, when they were sitting on a little brocaded settee in an alcove, “why do you talk with such a thick accent?”
“If I didn’t,” he said in perfect English, “nopony would believe I was Hoofarian. You should know that.” He bent forward and put her under the microscope of his bright little black eyes.
There was a catch in that remark somewhere. Watch out, Appleshine.
Nervous as she was, she could not help eating. This was the first time she had even seen such sumptuous food…. and probably the last, if the game was up.
He questioned her for what seemed like hours, listening carefully to her careful voice, his black button eyes observing the way she held her fork, the way she drank. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jet and Fancypants in the doorway. When they saw her, they slumped, and went dejectedly out onto the terrace, without even looking at the display of food on the buffet.
“That is a very pretty fairy tale,” Vocaliz Harmony said finally, when she had told him all her practiced story, plus a lot she had heroically invented. “You’re a good liar. Now I want the truth.”
So it was all up. Born Little Apple Acres. Taught herself. Textile factory. Apple seller. She might as well tell him the whole lot of it before he guessed at something even worse.
“Can I have some more champagne?” she asked desperately. She would run while he was gone for it.
“At your command.” He plucked a glass off the tray of a passing waiter. “Your health, princess.” He raised his glass.
“Don’t make fun of me.” Applestia looked down at her pearl and silver lap.
“Fun? No. Impertinence? Yes, perhaps, your highness. You have your own reasons for remaining incognito. I shall honor your secret. I just want you to know that the great Harmony is not deceived. Your English is perfect. Too perfect. These idle Canterlot ponies never bother to learn their own language properly. Your vowel sounds reveal to me most clearly that you are Hoofarian. I knew it half an hour ago, but it was when you said ‘champagne’ with that slight, that exquisite, hint of ‘cham-pyne’ that your royal blood was revealed.” He stood up. “Au revoir, princess.” He bowed low, and tickled the back of her hoof with his whiskers. “Enjoy yourself. My lips are sealed.”
He walked away with his hoof to the hole in his beard where his mouth was. A duchess claimed him, and he started to talk his gargling broken English again.
Applestia sat in the alcove paralyzed. Then a slow serene smile spread over her face, and she rose, and trotted very regally out to the terrace, to give her subjects the royal proclamation: “I did it!”
The terrace was empty. She found them halfway down the garden, sitting miserably on the plinth of a statue of Starswirl with their backs against the legs of the wizard.
When they saw her dress shimmering before them in the shadows, they raised their eyes but not their heads, like beaten stallions.
“I did it,” she said quietly, and told them what had happened.
“We did it!” They both jumped up, grabbed her hooves and romped around the statue like drunken revelers.
“I win the bet! I win, I win!” Jet shouted to the night, and a young stallion and a mare came round from behind a laurel bush to look at him.
“We did it,” he told them, “and he’ll have to pay all the bills.”
“I don’t care.” Fancypants said. “We did it!”
They reeled back indoors for champagne. Applestia followed. She was always following Jet, who was never gentlecoltly enough to let her go ahead, unless it was somewhere he didn’t want to go, like down the Gala’s stairs into the ballroom.
Professor Harmony had left. Now that she was free to talk to anypony, Applestia was the queen. Good Princess Sunny… Oh, Mum, if you were here to see me now! Everypony wanted to meet her, admire her, to dance with her. She flung herself so furiously into the party that she did not Jet until it was over.
“The belle of the ball!” Mrs. Set put her cloak around her with a friendly embrace, then took a closer look. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” How could Applestia stamp her hoof and say, “He didn’t do it… I did!”
But Mrs. Set was nopony’s fool. “Jet?” she asked.
Applestia nodded, and immediately would have given anything ot have the nod back. Now it would be all around Canterlot that she was in love with the stallion she hated most in all of Equestria.