Read Online Queen Sophie Hartley by Stephanie Greene - Free Book Online

until the minute you get off. It’s awful. You’d have to tie a tiara down with string.”
    â€œString? On a queen?” said Dr. Holt. “You mean a gold chain, don’t you?”
    â€œOf course,” breathed Sophie. She was carried away by the very thought of it. The gold, the diamonds. “Oh, I hope I meet a queen someday,” she said wistfully.
    â€œYou’ll have learn how to curtsy first,” said Dr. Holt. “Queens don’t shake hands with commoners.”
    â€œWhat’s a commoner?”
    â€œYou are. I am. Anyone who’s not a member of the royal family is considered a commoner.”
    â€œThat doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to call us,” said Sophie.
    â€œThat’s neither here nor there,” Dr. Holt said firmly. “If you want to meet a queen, you’ll have to learn how to curtsy.”
    â€œBut how?” said Sophie. “I don’t know anyone who knows how to curtsy.”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œYou
do?
” Sophie said. Dr. Holt was getting more and more amazing all the time. She couldn’t imagine anyone as stiff as Dr. Holt curtsying. Or letting anyone call her a commoner. Not even a queen.
    â€œI can teach you, too,” said Dr. Holt. Then before Sophie could say another word, she added, “But I’m warning you, it’s hard work. There’s a lot more to curtsying than just bobbing up and down.”
    â€œThat’s all right,” Sophie said rashly, thinking that her mother would fall over dead in a faint if she could hear. “I love hard work.”

Chapter Seven
    And hard work it was. Sophie was so eager to start that Dr. Holt agreed they could put the gardening to one side for a while. Sophie didn’t even mind the way Dr. Holt sat barking orders at her. She tried to follow her instructions very carefully. If she could get it right and meet a queen, Sophie was confident the tiara wouldn’t be far behind.
    It was much more complicated than she’d thought. There were a ton of things she had to remember. Back straight, arms out, head up, toes pointing straight ahead. The hardest part was keeping her balance. The first few tries,
every time Sophie got halfway into a curtsy, she fell over.
    â€œIt’s not a bob, the way all you young people seem to think it is these days,” Dr. Holt said unsympathetically as Sophie collapsed into another heap on the grass. “A real curtsy is a dignified, elegant movement. You
lower
your body to the ground. You don’t drop it.”
    â€œHow can I be dignified if I don’t even know what it means?” Sophie grumbled, getting to her feet.
    â€œBelieve me,” said Dr. Holt, “you’ll know what it means when you get it right.”
    Unfortunately, Sophie’s body didn’t want to lower, it wanted to drop. No matter how hard she tried. “You’re wobbling,” said Dr. Holt. “That’s because you’re leaning forward too much.”
    â€œI can’t help it,” Sophie wailed as she fell onto the grass for what felt like the thousandth time. She lay on her back and looked up at the sky, discouraged. “When I get the back right, you tell me my legs are wrong.
When I get the legs right, you tell me my arms wrong.”
    â€œYou’re not giving up, are you?”
    Sophie heard the challenge in Dr. Holt’s voice. She thought that maybe her life would be easier if she wanted a baseball cap, say, instead of a tiara.
    But she didn’t.
    â€œNo,” she said resignedly.
    â€œThen stand up and try it again.”
    Sophie sighed and stood up.
    â€œSlowly now,” Dr. Holt told her. “Remember: You’ve just walked down a long red carpet; you’re standing in front of the queen; she’s up on her throne wearing an ermine cloak and a magnificent tiara.”
    Sophie didn’t know what ermine was, but it sounded romantic. She stood up