Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [28]
But the fräulein knew a rich household when she saw one and she knew how to take command of a situation.
“I am not a servant, Herr Harrison,” she had told him firmly at the interview. “Natürlich I do not expect to be on the same floor with the family, but my rooms should be on the third floor front.”
“Natürlich,” Harmon agreed, glad to unload the problem of his daughter. So the fräulein had a large bedroom and sitting room of her own on the third floor front with a schoolroom down the hall, and Francie still had her cold little room at the back. And she ate her meals alone at the scrubbed pine kitchen table, while the fräulein had hers sent up on a tray to her room.
The first morning Fräulein Hassler sent a maid to fetch Francie on the dot of eight o’clock.
“You will report to me every day at this time,” she told her, looking her up and down critically.
There was a long silence while Francie shifted nervously from foot to foot, desperately wishing she could see the fräulein’s eyes behind the glasses.
“You are untidy,” the fräulein said sternly at last. “Your boots are dirty, there is a stain on your pinafore, and your hair is a mess. You will go back to your room and clean yourself up. I will not tolerate slovenliness.”
Scared, Francie rushed to do as she was told, then hurried back to the schoolroom.
Fräulein Hassler eyed her again carefully and then said, “You will come to the schoolroom each morning at eight precisely. You will be clean and tidy. You will knock at the door and wait until I bid you to enter. You will say, ‘Good morning, Fräulein Hassler,’ except on Wednesdays, when we shall speak only in German and then you will say, ‘Guten Morgen, Fräulein Hassler,’ and on Saturdays, when we shall speak only in French and you will say, ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle Hassler.’
“From eight until nine you will learn arithmetic, from nine until ten, English. Then I will take a half-hour rest while you learn a piece of poetry which you will repeat for me after the break. From eleven to twelve you will learn history and geography.
“Then I will take my lunch and rest and at two we shall go for an hour’s walk. You will learn to sew in the afternoons and at four o’clock, when I take my tea, you will finish the tasks I have set you. After that you may go to the kitchen for your supper and then to bed. Do you understand, Francesca?”
Francie nodded, her head swimming, thinking anxiously of Princess waiting for her in the stables. She didn’t like Fräulein Hassler and she did not like her plans.
“What happens on Sundays?” she asked suddenly.
“You mean, ‘Please, what happens on Sundays, Fräulein Hassler?’” the woman corrected her sharply. “We must do something about your manners, child. But since you ask, I shall reply. Sunday is my day off. No doubt the servants will take care of you and I suppose you will go to church in the morning and again in the evening. Your father left no instructions about that.”
Francie nodded. “I suppose so,” she said, a dismal vision of her future life passing quickly through her mind. But even Fräulein Hassler was better than having Papa around, so she guessed she’d just make the best of it. And hopefully, one day, Papa would send her back to the ranch again.
There was another compensation now that Papa was away; the fräulein never stirred from her rooms after supper and Francie was able to sneak Princess up to her room. She would save the dog something from her supper and at seven o’clock, when she knew the servants would be in their own quarters, she would take Princess for a walk down the hill. The winter evenings were cold and dark, but wrapped in her velvet-and-ermine cloak she didn’t feel the cold, and with the huge dog beside