//------------------------------// // Chapter Ten // Story: My Fair Pony // by 2K Chrome //------------------------------// Applestia had some bits in her pocket when she stormed out of 27a Whinnypole Street that morning. She bought a saddlebag and filled it with newspapers, so that the maid in the dingy little hotel by the railway station should think it was proper luggage. She spent all that evening reading the Situations Vacant advertisements in the newspapers, and all the next two days in employment agencies, looking for a job. At last she was offered an interview with a couple seeking a governess for three foals in a country house in, of all places, Northhooferland, home country of that belle of the ball, Miss Twinkling Appleshine. Her pink linen dress was now too crumpled and dirty to wear for an interview, so she had to go back to Whinnypole Street to get something to wear. She would leave all her fine clothes behind, and Jet could sell them, or give them to the next filly who was unlucky enough to be one of his experiences. She would take only the plain skirts and blouses she used to wear when she was struggling over the Rine in Spine, and Come Inter the Garden, Mawd. She went in at the kitchen entrance, and at once the hullabaloo started. Where had she been? What had happened? Had she been kidnapped? Why had she run away without telling anypony? “What did you expect me to do?” she asked. “Send you a telegram: Safe and well, wish you were here?” “I wasn’t worried,” Uncle Nutters said, although she noticed the slight quiver of his lip and his hooves shaking. “Upper Crust said we’d seen the last of you, but I knew you’d come back.” “I’ve only come for something to wear.” “What about the bird?” he said. “I knew you’d come back because of the bird.” “Yes. Azure.” She saw herself stepping off the train at some tiny backwater station in Northhooferland where the signalpony grew prize geraniums to pass the time between the trains, with her saddlebag and her birdcage. “Where in Equestria have you been?” Mrs. Set came down to the kitchen, since everypony was too busy exclaiming over Applestia to answer the bell she had been ringing. “We’ve had the police out searching, detectives, bloodhounds… you never saw such a hue and cry.” “I went back.” Mrs. Set would think she meant back to Sir Shining and Lady Appleshine in Northhooferland. But Mrs. Set did not think that. “To Market Square?” she asked quite easily. “He told you.” The rat. It didn't matter about anypony else, but for some reason, it was important that Mrs. Set should still believe in her. “No.” The professor’s mother smiled. I knew Jet was up to some game, of course, before he ever let me meet you. I’m not as simple as he thinks. But when I saw you, I recognized you immediately. You once sold me apples, three years ago, when my husband was still alive. He bought me a snack and he gave you an extra bit because you looked cold and hungry. ‘Good luck sir,’ you said, but you had better luck than he did. He lost his life soon after. You found yours.” “Why did you never tell?” Applestia asked. “Why did you let me make a fool of myself, thinking you believe in me?” “You were never a fool, my dear. And I have believed in you all along. I didn't want to spoil it. I wanted us to be proper friends. We are still friends, aren’t we?” “Yes.” The older mare’s smile was so warm and coaxing that Applestia had to smile too. “But I’m never coming back,” she added fiercely. “Pity. My spoiled son has been quite lost without you,” Mrs. Set said in the voice that might or might not be a joke. “It’s the first thing he’s wanted that he couldn’t have.” “He don’t want me. He doesn’t…” “Mother!” Jet was yelling down the back stairs. “What in Equestria are you doing? Are they bringing the soda water?” His mother grinned, and nodded to Applestia. She went to the bottom of the stairs, which ran up with a angled turn, so that she was hidden. “Comin’ up right away,” she called, in the old voice. “Applestia,” he said severely, “where the devil have you been?” “None of yer business.” “Isn’t that just like a mare? Here’s everypony been worried sick, half the guards in Canterlot out looking for you, ships at Fillybury Docks searched, the canal dragged for your body, and you say, ‘None of your business.’ Well, it’s my own fault. I wanted to change you from a street urchin into a real, complicated lady. At least I’ve done that.” “Ah thought you didn’t like mares!” They were shouting up and down the stairs, still out of sight of each other, with Mrs. Set and all the servants enjoying it. “I don’t, when they’re like you!” “How did you ever learn manners, with Jet around?” Mrs. Set asked pleasantly. “Fancypants taught me all that side of it,” Applestia answered, loud enough for Jet to hear. “I’ve taught her everything she knows,” he shouted back. “I’ve wasted months of effort and a lifetime of precious knowledge on this…. this ungrateful squashed cabbage leaf…. this heartless market guttersnipe!” “You watch yer tongue, Jet, there’s ladies present. Very respectable too, ah am. Goin’ ter be a governess.” “What will you teach?” He was taken aback. “Oh… ah dunno. Ponyetics probably. Saddleson. I may even get to the end of that poem before I get the sack. Find out if Maud ever got into that blasted garden.” “You’ll never get away with it on your own.” “Equestria hasn’t stopped, you know, because I’ve left you. I’ll get along all right” Mrs. Set nodded and made applauding gestures, and Diamond Mint, hiding in the broom cupboard, shouted faintly, “Hooray!” She shut the cupboard door quickly as Jet came down to the turn of the stairs to say sulkily, “I suppose you’ve never thought how I’ll get along without you.” “You got along before I came,” Applestia retorted, hiding her surprise. “Who’ll write my letters? Who will keep my engagements straight? I missed my appointment with the dentist yesterday. Who’ll toast my crumpets just the way I like? Dash it, Applestia, I’ve got used to having you here.” “Too bad.” She pushed past him, and went with dignity up the stairs. The door of Fancypants’s room was ajar. All the drawers and cupboards were open, and his tin trunk was in the middle of the floor. He was packing. “Hello,” Applestia said in the doorway. “Thank heavens you’re safe.” She came into the room and he kissed her warmly on the cheeks, clutching a pile of shirts. He was the only one who did not ask her, “Where have you been?” He had always treated her as if she had a right to a life of her own. “Why are you leaving, Fancypants?” “Got to. Jet has been like a bear with two sore heads, and I…. well, it’s no fun anymore, without you.” “That’s kind of you,” she said, “to feel like that.” “Frankly, Applestia,” he bent with a grunt to put the shirts in the trunk, “the professor has been just as upset. More so really, because…” “Missed his dentist,” she sniffed. “No one to toast his crumpets.” When she went up to her room, she stood in the doorway for a long time, without moving or changing her expression. The walls were newly papered with the little delicate rosebuds she and Mrs. Set had seen the last time they went shopping. At the window, matching chintz curtains stirred gently in the breeze that filtered through the sweet-smelling lime tree. There was a new rug on the floor, all the paint was freshly white, and the bed was made up with clean sheets and turned down for her to get in. As if in a dream, Applestia took off her linen dress and left it lying in a crumpled heap on the new rug while she put on her old blue serge skirt with the big buttons and pockets and the white blouse and the blue sailor tie. Moving like a sleepwalker, she went downstairs and into the study. She walked into the exact middle of the carpet to the respiration rose, where she had so often stood and lifted her diaphragm up and down in time to the metronome. He did not hear her come in. He was standing in the window, looking down at the street. The wax cylinder of the recording machine was turning slowly around under the needle, and out of the speaker came Applestia’s voice, slightly out of tune, with all the vowels agonizing. My old colt said, “Follow the van, And don’t dillydally on the way.” Off went the van wit me ‘ome packed in it… Applestia picked up the song and sang with herself, the two cockney voices blending, so that it was a moment before he turned, a wide smile spreading over his dear face. …Ya can’t trust a special like an old time copper When ya can’t find yer way home! “Home,” he said. “Home, Applestia.”