Read Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years for Free Online Page B

sort of bumbershoot.
    Puggles saw her struggling with the front door and rescued her. “Let me help, Mum,” he said, relieving her of the umbrela. It had a handle carved to look like a flying monkey; she hadn’t noticed that.
    Probably Cherrystone would decide that the umbrela was grounds for her execution. Wel, stuff him with a rippled rutabaga.
    “Everyone’s assembled, Mum,” said Puggles. “As you requested. Too bad about the weather, but there you are.”
    She’d written some notes al by herself, but raindrops smeared the ink when she took them out of her purse. “Goodness, Puggles,” she said in a low voice. “Do so many work here?”
    “Until today.”
    “I never quite realized. Wel, one rarely assembles the staff al at once.”
    “Once a year. The below-stairs staff party at Lurlinemas. But you don’t attend.”
    “I send the ale and those funny little baskets from the Fairy Preenela, one for everybody.”
    “Yes, Mum. I know. I order them and arrange for their delivery myself.”
    Was he being uppity? She couldn’t blame him. She should have realized the household staff was this large. There must be seventy people gathered here. “If this is the number on which we normaly rely, how are we to get along with only a skeletal crew, Puggles?”
    But he’d stepped back to join the paltry retinue that would not be dismissed, which had lined up behind her.
    Awkward. In what degree of affection or distance ought she to address them? The situation was grave; many of them were in tears. She was glad she had worn the watered-silk moss luncheon gown with the peek-a-boo calf flare and the carmine colar; she’d be stunning against Mockbeggar’s rose-colored stucco and ivory entablatures. A comfort to the staff, she hoped, her ability to maintain her style. An example.
    She plunged ahead. “Dear friends. Dear laborers in the field, dear dusters of the furniture, and whoever uses the loppers to keep the topiary in check. Dear al of you. What a dreary day this is.” She was reaching for a hankie already. How revolting, how mawkish. She didn’t know most of their names. But they looked so respectable and kind, in their common clothes. Men with hats in their hands, women in mobcaps and aprons. Surely they were going to leave their aprons behind? Aprons marked with House of Chuffrey crests? Wel, better not to make a fuss over it.
    “I know some of you have lodged here, lovingly tending Mockbeggar Hal, since long before I met Lord Chuffrey, rest his soul. For many of you—perhaps al of you, I’m a bit wobbly on the details—this has been your only home. Where you go to now, and what life awaits you there, is beyond my comprehension.”
    One or two of the young women straightened up and put their hankies away. Perhaps, thought Glinda, this hasn’t started wel.
    “I have arranged for your safe passage off the estate. The General has promised you wil not be accosted, nor wil your alegiance to my welfare al these years be held against you. Indeed, I have not supplied him a list of your names or your destinations.” This much was true. Cherrystone hadn’t asked for that. He was irritatingly fair from time to time, which made resenting him a tricky business.
    “Nothing should have pleased me more than to provide you with lodging and work here until the end of my days,” she said. “In the absence of that, I have had the seamstresses work overtime, hand stitching on some cotton geppling serviettes the lovely old-fashioned blessing OZSPEED. By the way, thank you, seamstresses; you must have had to stay up past midnight to manage supplying al this lot.”
    “Actualy, we’re a few short,” muttered Puggles.
    She paid him no mind. Having been Throne Minister for that brief period had taught her several useful skils.
    “Mum,” caled someone; Glinda couldn’t tel who it was. “Wil you have us back, in time?”
    “Oh, if I have my say,” she replied cheerily. “Though I doubt you’l recognize me when that