Unknown Read Online Free Page A

ladies. Though it had been several years since either of them had spoken to any actual ladies. And Lily, meanwhile, had learned the patois of St. Giles as diligently as she’d learned French; it was part of her costume, a key to her survival.
    “Oh, yes! Today I helped Mrs. Smythe with the cooking and washing up,” Alice told her proudly. “And look, she gave me a penny.” She pushed a penny into Lily’s hand. It was warm and moist; clearly Alice had been gripping it all day.
    “I’m proud of you, Alice. ‘Tis no mean feat to extract a penny from Mrs. Smythe. Did you perhaps cast a spell on her?”
    Alice giggled. “No! She just said I was a good worker. I wish I knew how to cast a spell.”
    A good worker. At ten years old, Alice was “a good worker.” A ten-year-old girl should be playing at working, not earning a penny to give to her sister to buy food. Lily thrust a sharp metaphorical elbow into the thought; she could not afford to let it catch hold of her, for there was little she could do about it. “You are a miracle worker, then. Mrs. Smythe is as tightfisted as they come.”
    Mrs. Smythe had a figure like two barrels stacked one atop the other and a face as hard as a brick. Neither Alice nor Lily had ever seen her smile, but the bricklike effect was softened somewhat by the four or five long gray hairs fringing her chin, which fascinated Alice. Lily always had to remind her not to stare.
    The very best thing about Mrs. Smythe was her implacability: no matter how long you had lived under her regime, no matter your circumstances, you were out on the street if your rent was late by even a moment. Mrs. Smythe’s rules intimidated the worst rogues from attempting to take rooms, which kept the lodging house reasonably safe and her rents higher than most. Lily had honed her pick pocketing skills specifically to satisfy Mrs. Smythe’s requirements.
    Alice giggled again. “Maybe I did say some magic words without knowing it. Perhaps they were, ‘Mrs. Smythe, shall I sweep the floor now?’”
    Lily tweaked her sister’s long blonde braid. “Well, from now on every time we need something good to happen, we’ll say to ourselves, ‘Mrs. Smythe, shall I sweep the floor now?’ And then we shall wait for the result.”
    Alice laughed, delighted by the idea. “ Mrs. Smythe, shall I sweep the floor now? Oh, Mrs. Smythe, shall I sweep the floor now ?” she sang, skipping about the room.
    Her mother, the daughter of a curate, would have been aghast at the thought of her daughters casting spells, but Lily joined in the song anyway as she sliced cheese and bread. She’d gone straight from McBride to the bread shop, and then to the cheese shop, and then bought a small nosegay of violets for Fanny, because Fanny was always kind and informative—particularly regarding the use of knees and elbows—and would never think to do such a thing for herself.
    But her purchases had exhausted Lily’s take; she’d be out again tomorrow hunting for coins and watch fobs.
    “If our song really is magical, tomorrow it should be raining pennies,” she said through bites of bread.
    “We’ll buy shoes,” Alice said dreamily. “And a great house like the house in your story. Tell a story, Lily.”
    Lily had always catalogued the world sensually, through her eyes and ears and fingertips, and her impressions spilled out in the form of stories. The old nag that pulled the flower cart became a unicorn; Mrs. Smythe became a child-eating giantess, McBride a wizard with potions that went sadly awry. She spun stories at night until the room seemed to throb with magic, giving each character its own voice, its own mannerisms; the stories warmed the two of them better than gin. And Lily knew this because she’d tried gin— once. Vile stuff, like swallowing sour fire. She hadn’t tasted it again.
    Rather unlike Papa.
    “Which story shall I tell? The one about the great house? Or a new one?”
    “The one about the great