Finally Alex managed to drag himself out of bed but not after repeated visits from one of the other household staff bearing ever increasingly annoying messages from his mother. In the end he just told the messenger to ignore her and carry on with whatever he was doing before she kept interrupting him. Dwain was scuttling around Alex's room gathering up the necessary dirty laundry and what not and Alex stepped out of his room into the main part of the house. Leaning on the banister he looked down onto the main entrance where the prospective girl sat with her father, who was enjoying a glass of  fresh lemonade, while they waited for Alex's parents. A door opened and Alex's mother came scuttling out all apologies to the waiting man for the delay but he was surprisingly unflustered and waved them aside quite happily chatting with her as they walked back into the room she had just come from. The girl sat there, all demour and what not calmly looking around when suddenly she looked up and caught Alex looking at her. 

"Mr. Alex Carmichael I presume" she said loud enough for him to hear but not loud enough to disturb the adults.

Alex stumbled over his answer a little, "Yeah that's me"

The girl raised a delicately pencilled eyebrow, "You don't strike me as the son of a illustriuos lawyer and judge"

Alex grinned and walked the short distance to the stairs and slowly descended, "Call me a rebel."

"Most certainly. Anyway my name is Lucy de Gambrien." she replied stretching her back even straighter.

Alex winced slightly but let it pass and his face was normal when he reached the bottom of the stairs, "I'm sure I'll have to call you Miss Gambrien for the duration of your visit."

The girl laughed, high and light, "Miss Lucy will do. Father would be into the whole respect thing but I'm certainly not."

Alex laughed, "So underneath that posh dress there's a rebel waiting to be released"

The two of them walked out into the garden and talked for a while finding that each others company was indeed quite fun but when it came to be time for Lucy to go home Alex did find himself silently breathing a sigh of relief.  Although he did answer his parents questions about his time with her over dinner he couldn't leave fast enough to go down to the kitchens where Alene worked. She was cleaning out an oven when he got there and the old cook, Martha, was happily singing away to herself as she kneaded bread dough.

When she was out of the oven but still on the floor he playfully slapped her bum and she squealed turning to look at him.

"Alex!" she squealed happily

"Hello Alene" he grinned as he kissed her.

"C'mon you love birds. Let Alene finish her chores then she's all yours" Martha said grinning widely and Alex took a seat at the table opposite her until Alene was finished and then they left via the back hand in hand.

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Author guidance for This exercise

Something I basically came up (barfed up) with in the middle of the night. In truth, it is to please my own selfish ends in venting forms of satire and humor (and possibly, of others?).

Anything goes - except for sludge monsters.

updated Dec 25 '09 by RomancingtheTurkey