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Chapter 3

Flora's POV

"You two are absolute disgraces," the Mother Superior ranted. She'd been at us ever since we'd gotten back from Medda's, at which point we'd been summoned to her. "A burlesque hall! A den of ill repute! Even for you, Flora Collins, this is a whole new level of depravity!"

I bristled. "Irving Hall has an excellent reputation! And depravity? All we did was visit my aunt! "

"Visit your aunt? When Mr. Lloyd found you, you were in a crowd of rowdy street urchins, and your aunt did nothing to stop their association with you! If your mother, god rest her soul, had seen you with them, I despair of what she may have thought!"

"How dare you bring her into this?" I yelled.

"How dare I?" she screamed back at me. She drew her hand back and, quick as flash, slapped me across the face. I sagged back against my seat, my hand rising to feel my face. It stung bitterly, but I would never let her know that I was hurt. "If you two seem to enjoy associating with urchins so much, who am I to stop you?" her voice was eerily calm, like being in the eye of the storm. "So, instead of punishment, this should be a reward. You two will aid the sisters in giving nourishment to poor street children, starting tomorrow. Miss Day, you will do this for two weeks," she directed this last at Eleanor, who'd been deathly silent throughout the last exchange. "And Miss Collins," she addressed herself to me. "Two months. Dismissed."

"Thank you mother," we both said. The words tasted like poison in my mouth. As soon as we left the room, Eleanor regained the ability to speak.

"That woman!" she practically squeaked. "How dare she!"

"Careful Elle," I smiled wryly. It only made the stinging worse. "If she hears you, you'll get a slap and six more weeks added on."

"And that's another thing!" she said, her voice growing stronger with each word. "We both snuck out, but I get a quarter of your punishment! And she never should have slapped you, or brought up your mother!" Elle is the only person who doesn't avoid the subject of my mother like the plague. I respect her for that, not thinking that I'm too delicate to hear a word about my sainted mother. But for the Mother Superior to tell me that she would judge me for behaviour… that's a whole different thing than the way Elle speaks of her.

"Elle, let's just leave it," I said. "Besides, the punishment isn't so bad this time." The last time I snuck out, I'd gotten into a fistfight with some idiot before I even made it to Medda's. That time, Mr. Lloyd hadn't hauled me back. It'd been the police. That time I'd been on lockdown for eight weeks, and locked in the chapel for three hours alone every day to pray for forgiveness. "Let's look on the bright side!" I continued cheerily. "Maybe we'll even get to see those newsies again!"

Elle snorted. "Only you would call that a good thing." We started walking towards our rooms.

"You can't say they were anything other than perfect gentlemen!" I laughed, ignoring the pain that shot through my cheek at the sudden move. "In fact, that nice boy helped you down!"

She looked at me like I was crazy. "It was a staircase. I could've walked down on my own!"

"But what's the fun in that?" I said. The sting was fading, which was good. With any luck, tomorrow the mark would be gone too.

"You certainly enjoyed being helped," she said. "By that boy… David, his name was?"

I realized what she was getting at. "He was very nice, but I've only met him once. It's not like in those books you read, the books you don't want the sisters to know about!"

She blushed a violent magenta. "Those are my private books!" she gasped. "How did you..?"

I shrugged. "You keep them under your mattress and take them out when you think I'm not looking."

"But why couldn't it?" she pressed. "Be like in the books. Love at first sight and all."

"Firstly, there are no newsies in your books. It's all pirates, and English lords, who sweep girls off their feet and waltz them off to faraway lands and estates. Second, the girl usually turns out to be a lost princess or something. If either of us were a lost princess, don't you think we'd have gotten the hell out of here by now?"

"Hey," she pushed me playfully. "You can't use that word here! St. Jerome would be so ashamed!"

"Goodness gracious!" I exclaimed. "And God forbid I offend St. Jerome, our dear patron." St. Jerome Emiliani is the patron saint of orphans, like me, and abandoned children, like Elle. That's why the convent school's named after him: The St. Jerome School for Orphan Girls. I'd been brought there when I was nine, but Elle had lived there her whole life. She'd been found on the steps when she was six months old with a note that said nothing but 'Eleanor'. The sisters had picked the last name 'Day' for her because it sounds it sounds like Eleanor Dei. In Latin, that means Eleanor of God. They thought it was terribly clever.

"Come on," she said, still laughing. "I'll race you back to the rooms!"

We took off like shots, our skirts flying out behind us.

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