Hello! Here's my pretty new chapter! Unfortunately, I ran out of clever alliterations for the titles!!
Thanks for reading, and give me a review if you want!
The Ogress was happy. It was the first time in years.
It was beautiful; magnificent! All these years, she had been arguing with any wicked scoundrel of a being who dared tell her that her Josephine was dead.
There had been a funeral. Monsieur Hucheloup had insisted on that.
"Imagine," she had marveled then, "Havin' a funeral for a girl who's living!"
It made her laugh a bitter, harsh sort of snicker.
It was apparent, to the Ogress, that her angel of a husband had found Josephine, wherever she was in the world, and brought her home.
He had called the girl Azelma, and he had tried to pass her off as his beggar offspring who needed a job! Hah!
The Ogress knew, at first sight, that this wasn't any cold, emaciated waif of a girl. It was a shadow of Josephine's former self; no doubt, but it was Josephine!
Heaven was testing her sieve of a memory, she was certain of it. Look how she had recognized her husband! Look how she had remembered her daughter!
She felt –no, she knew!- that the fact that she remembered her family's existence made her a first-rate mother.
"See that, Virgin Mary?" The Ogress muttered, as she fingered the oft-forgotten rosary in her pocket. "I'm a good mother, I am, and what good mother should be denied access to heaven?"
The Ogress not only had a daughter, she had achieved salvation!
This pleased the Ogress. It pleased her very much.
Mild Azelma would not have answered the door under any normal circumstances. She sharply observed, however, that things could get no queerer, and diffidently opened the door but a crack.
"My daughter!" came a screech.
Ah. It was the proprietress. Even easily shaken Azelma was not shocked at this misstatement. It had been a week; the proprietress could do nothing to surprise her anymore. Azelma could not, however, keep from wrinkling her face up in surprise at the noise.
"Yes, maman?" It was easier to give into the delusional demands of "the Ogress's" (so had her father called Ma'am Hucheloup) than to attempt to pull her out of her fairy world.
"You'll never guess who's arrived!" the obvious pleasure in the Ogress's voice put Azelma on the alert, and she hastily pressed the door the rest of the way shut.
"Who?" Azelma replied warily through the splintering, rodent-gnawed door. There had been more truth to Ogress's statement than Azelma wished to say.
"Don't you remember me, Fifi?" This was a man's voice. A deep young man's voice.
"I don't like to be called Fifi, sir." Azelma whispered. It was all Azelma could muster up the courage to whisper.
After a painful pause, she added, "I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are."
"Splendid joke," he laughed. "Imagine, not recognizing your own fiancée!"
Azelma silently noted that things could indeed get queerer.
Much queerer indeed.