“Well, miss,” she said, “ and how did you like your bedroom? Did you find it airy and comfortable?”
“Why are you so horrid to me?” asked Ella. “I’m sure I’ve done nothing to deserve it. If you do not like to have me in the house I will go away and not trouble you any more. Let me go back to school and spend my holidays there, as I have done before.”
“A splendid idea,” mocked Euphronia, “and I’ve no doubt it is just what you would like. There is to be nomore school for you, miss. Too much money has been wasted on you already, and we will certainly spend no more. What does a little chit like you want of learning Italian and history and dancing! You will have to make yourself useful now, and do something to earn your keep!”
If anybody had told Ella a day or two before that she would have been miserable at the idea of not being allowed to go back to school, she would not have believed them; but at these words her heart sank. What further humiliations had Fate in store?
She was soon to learn, for Euphronia hustled her off into the kitchen and made her sit down at the table with the servants. There she was given a hunk of coarse bread and a mugful of milk, and told to eat heartily because that was all she would get until the following morning. She learnt, too, that she was not even to have the attic where she had unpacked her clothes, but was to sleep henceforward in the very garret where she had been imprisoned, on that ragged straw mattress that had not been good enough for a scullion.
