Chapter 7
Chapter 7: Tavern waitress.
That night, the landlady took Alice to her new residence. The house was smaller than the one where Alice lived with her mother before. Except for a narrow bed, there was only a stove, which was used for cooking or heating, and there was an old urine bucket next to it. Even if you live in prison, it probably won’t be any worse than this. But this is a shelter after all, and it is much warmer and safer than sleeping on the street. Alice kicked the urine bucket to the corner of the wall furthest from the bed, hoping it wouldn’t emit a great smell.
In this way, Alice finally had a fixed residence and a means of earning a living. It seemed that she could settle down, but the development of things always did not go as smoothly as she imagined.
Although the lady in the laundry room allowed her to stay, she only allowed her to wash small pieces of clothes. The laundry cost of small clothes is only one-third of that of large clothes, but it is not very troublesome to wash them. Alice is not as proficient as her mother in washing clothes, and even if she does it non-stop, she earns only half of her mother’s salary every week. Although she was able to get some tips every week when she accompanied the proprietress to the temple kitchen to collect clothes, she had never seen Master Etienne there, and the tips by those temple apprentices were not generous.
When her mother was a washerwoman, how did she earn enough money for the two of them? Alice felt all this was incredible.
Knowing that her money is not enough to spend, she tried to eat as little as possible, but the twelve-year-old girl’s appetite was like a little wolf, always hungry and could never be satisfied. Sometimes she washes clothes until late, so she goes to bed hungry, and her dreams are full of the sweetness of cakes. The next morning, I was so hungry that I was staring at Venus and had to eat a double breakfast.
She used all the math she knew, worked hard to calculate her income and the last little money left by her mother before her death, and found that no matter how she saves, this savings will be used up in a month or two.
Although the God of the Future has promised her that she will meet the legendary mercenary “Undead Roma” in the near future, but this time limit, in case she starves to death before encountering the “Undead Roma”… then it makes a little sense. It’s all gone.
Alice is also trying to figure out a solution herself.
Every time she accompanies the tavern proprietress to deliver her clothes, she always finds an excuse to leave, go shopping in the street, and every time she encounters a store, she goes in and asks if the other party is hiring.
Most places are reluctant to accept children like Alice who are not introduced by acquaintances, but those people are still kind and will not treat her rudely. On the contrary, some people who know her and her mother’s situation treat her like a catastrophe. , Often she was blasted out as soon as she entered the store:
“Get out of here! We don’t need a **** who is not blessed by the gods!”
More than a month later, Alice visited almost every shop nearby, but was ruthlessly rejected.
Except… that pub.
Alice deliberately left the tavern until the end. To be honest, she was a little scared of the place. When her mother was still alive, she often warned her to stay away from the tavern. Alice probably knows why her mother is so worried, there are always some drunken guys nearby, and there are too many factors of instability. Although most of those guys are usually just honest craftsmen, once they drink alcohol, they will be bold and will not necessarily do anything. Especially in the tavern, there are often some mercenaries and people who come from afar. If these guys abduct her and sell her to the fireworks street, she really has nowhere to cry.
But she has no other way. If she doesn’t make up her mind quickly, she will soon be unable to live. She knew that there must be a shortage of people in the tavern, and there were always recruitment notices on the door. But it takes a lot of courage to open that door. Alice passed by the entrance of the tavern several times, wandering back and forth for a few times, finally made up her mind to push open the oily shutter door, and asked with determination as if she was mortal:
“You… do you need someone to do the chores?”
She thought she was yelling these words, but her voice was as soft as a feather falling on the ground. Fortunately, the tavern was not open at this time, and there was no sound in it, and Alice’s voice still came out clearly.
There is a bartender in the bar, tall and thin, like a pencil. He was wiping the glass with a rag, heard the sound, and glanced at her blankly:
“Applicants walk through the side door.”
The bartender is really cold, and looking at him like that, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of people here. Alice slandered and turned to look for the side entrance of the tavern.
Alice walked over and knocked on the side door of the tavern in a narrow and dirty alley.
The door opened from the inside, opened by the bartender just now. At this time, he put on a shabby old dress jacket over the bartender’s clothes, and his expression was more serious. It seemed that changing a dress was equivalent to changing his identity.
“I’m the shopkeeper here.” He said, “You need to pass an interview if you want to work here.”
Alice has asked so many stores, and has never had an interview opportunity, so she nodded nervously.
The shopkeeper let her in, pulled a chair by the kitchen table to invite her to sit, and began to ask her questions:
“name?”
“Alice.”
“How old are you.”
“I’m already twelve years old.”
The shop owner curled his lips:
“You should know that, generally speaking, only people over the age of seventeen can enter and leave the tavern, right?”
Of course Alice knows this, but now she really needs work too much to think about it:
“If you only work in the kitchen… there shouldn’t be any restrictions, right?”
“The problem is that we don’t lack for miscellaneous things—it’s even more than enough. What we need are young girls who can be waitresses.”
“Tavern girl? Don’t you have to be seventeen years old?”
Alice opened her eyes wide.
“You’re pretty tall, so you can pretend to be seventeen years old.” He explained, looked at Alice’s expression, and added, “If you don’t want it, forget it.”
Although Alice had made a lot of psychological preparations before entering the tavern, she felt her heart sinking when she heard the owner let her be the waitress in the tavern. Generally speaking, this is not a glorious profession. According to the general saying, being a waitress in a tavern is the beginning of depravity. Alice’s mother did not work as a tavern waitress in the most difficult days, but a washerwoman. If she knew that her daughter was going to be a tavern waitress, she might slap Alice in the face. But her mother is no longer in this world, and she desperately needs money, so there is no one or anything that can stop her from sliding down the abyss.
She bit her lip hard and nodded:
“I do.”
At this moment, Alice heard the kitchen door rang, and a female voice came from behind her:
“Hewlett, don’t scare the kids,”
Alice turned her head and saw a plump and beautiful woman coming in. Her hair was long and flowing, with fluffy curls, and her lips were covered with bright red lipstick. The tavern uniform was tightly wrapped around her. Part of it seems almost to be broken.
The shopkeeper called Hewlett had a gentle look in his eyes. Since Alice entered the door, he has never seen him put on such an expression. She looked at the beauty who had just come in curiously, and the beauty came over, put her hands on the table, looked at her with her eyes, and talked to Hewlett on her mouth:
“Rookie? Is it too young?”
Huoli nodded:
“We are really short of people now, even children have to accept it. But what should we do? Rosalind’s uniform is too big for her, I can’t make another one.”
“She can wear the old uniform that I had when I first came here, and I’m keeping it safe.” She said, raising her chin at Alice, “My child, what’s your name?”
“Love, Alice.”
“I am Lena, the foreman here, and you will be under my control from today. When anyone asks about your age, you say seventeen. Do you understand?”
Alice nodded quickly, Lena found a uniform from nowhere and stuffed it in her arms:
“Take this to the corner of the other side and replace it. If something is too big, find a pin to pin it.”
Alice held her clothes and walked to the corner of the wall that Lena pointed out to her. There was half a curtain cloth hanging there, which was regarded as a simple changing room. Alice quickly changed her clothes, pinned her empty chest again with a pin, and walked out.
Lena looked at her with satisfaction:
“You can sit here and rest for a while, and we’ll open the door in a while.”
Alice can only nod her head and can’t say a word. She sat at the table for a while, and saw a fat man with the appearance of a chef coming in through the side door. He saw Alice and asked her straightforwardly:
“How old are you?”
“Ten, seventeen years old?”
The chef laughed:
“Lina asked you to say that? I am my own, and I don’t need to be like that in front of me.”
“Have you eaten?”
Alice shook her head. She ate oatmeal in the morning, and until now, she hasn’t eaten anything.
“Damn it, how can I make kids work hungry? We are not forced labor here, we have to let people eat first.”
While saying this, the chef started cooking, and quickly put a large plate of food in front of Alice:
“Eat it.”
There was nothing special on the plate, it was all common things in the pub, fried onion rings and mashed potatoes, and a sandwich with fried bacon and eggs in it, exuding an attractive aroma. The chef even helped her make a cup of tea.
Alice hasn’t eaten such food for a long time. There is nothing to eat at home. She can’t make it without money. She can only use the stove to bake potatoes and cook oatmeal, add some salt and eat it. The delicacies I ate at the Feast of the Gods a month ago seemed to be something from my previous life. Whenever I think about it, I feel unreal, as if it was just a dream. After waking up from the dream, I can only continue to suffer from hunger.
She ate a few bites, and another waitress arrived, her name was Ruth, she looked younger than Lena, but not so pretty. Before Alice had finished eating the sandwich, the two had become acquainted. Alice was surprised to find that she was unexpectedly at ease here, and adapting so quickly was incredible.
No one asked her surname, and no one asked what **** she believed in. No one would even talk about Fergna. It seems like a world without gods, and the gods are all locked outside the tavern.
Compared to the landlord’s wife’s house or the laundry room, this place is more like her real home.