What Comes of Attending the Commoners Ball

by Elisabeth Aimee Brown

Ah, but Mum would kill me. We don’t need help. We don’t accept help. Mum and Dad would rather starve than know that I stooped so low.

All I’ve known—all I’ve been taught to know—is work and stubbornness and a bitterly proud self-reliance.

I can’t change my whole worldview just because one man thinks he can solve any problem. Lucas steps back and nods, a flash

that to accept help is the sign of a weak fool, and to ask for help is worse still. But the thought of Dad being confined to a hard chair in an isolated one-room cottage is enough to make me consider it.