The stage was set!

  The room was glowing with golden light, shining and reflecting on mirrors and polished gold and brass fixtures set against white-painted wood panels.

  Glamour!

  Glitz!

  It was a party room that wouldn’t look bad even in the palace at Versailles, where Queen Marie lived!

  This Wisconsonites took Friendliness to the next level, all right!

  Whether it was a shady, windowless conference room for plotting…

  Or a magnificent ballroom…

  They were always ready to be good hosts!

  Duchess Sophie waited patiently, just like she had been taught!

  And then, the grand ballroom doors opened.

  “The General Secretary of the Friendly Commonwealth of Wisconsin has arrived, attended by her diplomatic team.”

  Sophie stood up gracefully, her pale yellow diplomacy party dress swirling about her little legs.

  Sophie was on her first diplomatic mission!

  She was only eight years old, but here she was!

  She was full of ‘I’m-gonna-do-it!’ spirit!

  She clenched her little hands for a second, before she forced them to relax and swept into a curtsy.

  She had practiced curtsying a lot!

  She was pretty good at it!

  She looked up, and there she was, just like the portraits she had seen.

  Brenda, the General Secretary!

  She was wearing that drab business suit she always wore…

  But that was just her style!

  Sophie had been told not to say anything about it.

  Her job was to get Wisconsin to help them end the Revolution!

  It had gone on long enough!

  They had had to cancel so many parties for lack of cake…

  Those bakers and millers and farmers needed to get back to work!

  Sophie turned her eyes away from the professional General Secretary and her similarly dressed minions, and saw…

  Oh my!

  Was that a Countess’ daughter?!

  Here in Wisconsin?

  But Sophie had never met her before…

  The little girl with light brown hair and bright blue eyes wearing a pink dress stepped forward and…

  Extended her hand!

  But she did it wrong!

  Oh no, this was all wrong!

  “Hi! My name is Lily! I’m a meaty tater!”

  “It’s ‘mediator,’ Lily,” Brenda corrected.

  “Ah! I’m a mediator!”

  Sophie pulled out her folding fan and used it to cover the lower half of her face, looking over the top with only her eyes.

  “I’m Duchess Sophie. Lily, who taught you your manners?!”

  It was outrageous!

  Lily’s hand slowly fell to her side.

  And then, she looked up into the empty air next to her!

  “Ahem, Lily holds the Order of the Friend of Peoples, and Texans’ Medal of Freedom, and she is our representative to the Glorious Sun Kingdom of France to help end the Revolution,” Brenda said, finishing the introductions.

  “Oh!” Sophie snapped the fan shut. “I see.”

  One of the minions stepped forward, and—

  Cat!

  Kitty!

  Big fluffy boy spotted!

  It took all of Sophie’s maturity and training to maintain her poise!

  “Mrow,” he said, held in the minion’s arms. He was blending into the background of the minion’s grey suit!

  “Okay, Mr. Cat!” Lily said, smiling, and then watched as Mr. Cat leapt to the ground, and came over to Sophie!

  She started trembling.

  She wanted to pet him so bad!

  But…

  She was supposed to be working!

  No, she could hold back…

  Mr. Cat sat down right in front of her!

  Looked her right in the eye!

  “Meow,” he meowed!

  Sophie completely lost her composure.

  She fell to her knees, her dress poofing out around her, and extended her hand to the cat!

  “Here kitty kitty…”

  He sniffed her hand, and…

  Rubbed his head against her hand!

  Ah…

  Sophie melted.

  All the diplomats watched nervously as the Duchess pet the cat.

  The meeting was off to a horrible start!

  Their mediator had been rebuffed and insulted, and then froze up!

  And now the Duchess was acting entirely out of character…

  And Lily smiled!

  She stepped forward and crouched down, too!

  “He likes it if you scritch behind his ear!” she said, demonstrating.

  “Purr purr,” said Mr. Cat.

  Sophie had been gently stroking his beautiful blue-grey fur, and now she tried scritching!

  “Purr purr.”

  “So cute…” she whispered.

  And, after what felt like only a second…

  Mr. Cat turned and walked away!

  He walked back to the minion, who scooped him up and held him again.

  Sophie reached out with her hand!

  Ah, don’t go…

  Lily giggled.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “That’s my pet cat, his name is Mr. Cat!”

  “Meow, I’m nobody’s pet! I’m a free cat!” Mr. Cat protested from his position held in Sally’s arms.

  Sophie looked up at Lily, and…

  She had tears in her eyes!

  Lily only had the slightest moment to panic, when…

  “D-do you think he doesn’t like me?” Sophie asked tearfully.

  “Huh? No, he said you’re nice! He wouldn’t let you pet him if you weren’t nice, or if your hands were sticky.”

  “But he walked away…”

  “That’s how he is! He’s a free spirit, but he’ll always come back if you have fries…”

  Sophie didn’t know what fries were, but if cats liked fries, she wanted them!

  Sophie stood up again, smoothed out her dress, and looked again at this Lily person.

  There was more to her than met the eye!

  She knew the ways of kitty-cats…

  And then, her eyes widened.

  She forgot to introduce herself!

  “Ahem, forgive me, but I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Sophie, and I’m the Duchess of Bourbon.”

  “Bourbon!” Ghostly Duke cried, but only Lily and the other ghosts heard him.

  “I’m Lily! Nice to meet you!”

  Lily extended her hand again.

  “What are you doing?” Sophie asked.

  “Handshake!”

  “Huh?”

  Sophie was bewildered.

  Confused!

  This wasn’t in her manners lessons…

  Ghostly Ray Croc was holding Ghostly Duke back from distracting Lily, so Mac and Rich advised her.

  “Lily, that’s a business thing! I dunno if princesses know about handshakes.”

  “Mac, she said she’s a duchess, not a princess.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Heck if I know! I think princess is higher up.”

  But Lily was too blessed to be thrown off by all the conflicting information!

  She was blessed by Ame-no-Uzume, the heavenly persuader!

  So, she just explained it like a normal person!

  “That’s how we introduce ourselves back in Appalashia! We hold each others’ hands, like this…”

  Lily took Sophie’s hand!

  Ba-dump

  “And then we shake it up and down! There’s a lot of high level techniques, but that’s the basics!”

  The Gods of Business and Golf nodded as they looked down from heaven.

  It was true!

  How you gripped, how many times you shook; there were even two-handed handshake techniques!

  There were even…

  Secret handshakes!

  The art of shaking hands has endless depths…

  Sophie felt herself blush as Lily finished shaking her hand. “Ahem, well, I see. Ahem, er, ahem, uh, well, in France, we don’t do that!”

  After fake-clearing her throat a few times, Sophie regained her composure!

  “In France, we curtsy! Look!”

  Sophie showed off her curtsy!

  It was really good!

  Of one hundred nobles watching, ninety-nine would be impressed!

  Sophie was really advanced for her age!

  “Wow!” Lily beamed and clapped her hands.

  Sophie puffed out her chest, proud of herself.

  “But what do boys do? They don’t wear dresses, so they can’t curtsy.”

  Lily made a good point!

  “Boys bow,” Sophie answered simply.

  As the two little girls in dresses chattered, the diplomats were sweating!

  This was nothing like what they had been expecting!

  And yet…

  The duchess and the out-of-towner were chatting just fine!

  Brenda’s directions got the diplomacy team moving again, and they set out cake and chamomile tea for five.

  The Duchess.

  The Entrepreneur.

  The General Secretary.

  The Cat.

  And Lily’s Mama.

  The tea set was delicate, expensive, and gorgeous porcelain!

  The tea was the finest chamomile blend, with no caffeine to keep little girls up all night!

  The milk and cream were as fresh as could be, now that the cows were giving milk again!

  And the best chefs in Bessie’s Landing had whipped up cupcakes!

  Sadly, cheese took a little too long to make to be included in tonight’s tea party.

  The cream cheese in a cheese danish takes about a day to make!

  Hopefully the Duchess wouldn’t notice, or mind…

  And…

  Sophie didn’t mind or notice at all!

  She liked cake, like all the nobility in France!

  Cheese was nice, but that was an acquired, grown-up taste!

  The most grown-up cheeses were too stinky for her…

  They sat down, and a maid wearing the traditional black dress, white apron, and white cap served them tea and cupcakes.

  Sophie took a bite of cupcake.

  Yummy!

  And she took a sip of tea!

  Perfectly warm and refreshing!

  The comforting taste of chamomile!

  A perfect late night tea!

  Now they could get down to business!

  Sophie turned to Brenda.

  “Ahem, General Secretary, thank you for this lovely tea party.”

  “I’m glad that you like it, Duchess,” Brenda replied graciously.

  “And I’m sure you’ve heard of the terrible troubles we’re having in France…”

  Brenda nodded. “Indeed, we have. This Revolution has lasted for a while now, hasn’t it?”

  “It has! At first we thought this would be a normal, just-for-a-week-or-two Revolution until things went back to normal, but the Revolutionaries seem serious this time!”

  “Oh my,” Sally couldn’t help but say.

  Everyone looked at her, and she blushed, and busied herself with her tea.

  Mr. Cat had a saucer of milk in addition to his own tea and cupcake, and he paused his lapping to look at Sophie.

  So cute!

  “Mrow, did you really order them to stop making bread?”

  That was it!

  The crux of the issue!

  “Well, it wasn’t me personally,” Sophie said.

  She was only a Duchess!

  “But the bakers were obsessed with making bread! Croissants, baguettes, fougasse, campagne, brioche, one and on… They weren’t making the cakes on time! And it was the social season!”

  Sophie was getting worked up.

  “We had to cancel some of our parties! It was utterly disgraceful. The bakers said they had to, to feed everyone, so Queen Marie ordered them to just make cake and eat that! Perfectly reasonable, if you ask me.”

  So spake the eight year old French Duchess.

  “So the Queen sent me here to ask for your help, General Secretary. We need to get the commoners back to work. As it is, they’re on strike, and protesting every day, and nobody has any cake nor any bread!”

  General Secretary Brenda took a slow sip of tea as she thought this over.

  “Well, I’m afraid that Wisconsin is quite busy with something of a revolution of our own…”

  “Oh my!” Sophie exclaimed.

  She hadn’t expected that!

  “You see, our dairy cows were unhappy, and we weren’t being Friendly enough, though we’ve just recently started getting better…”

  “Well, that’s good,” Sophie said.

  “Indeed,” Brenda took another sip. “It’s all thanks to Lily, here. She was able to understand the dairy cows, and tell us how to be Friendlier, and they’ve started giving milk again. In fact, without her, we wouldn’t have had the milk or cream for today’s party.”

  “Oh my!” Sophie looked at the little girl in the pink dress, who was currently feeding bits of cupcake to Mr. Cat.

  “Lily, no more cupcake for Mr. Cat! He’s finally slimmed down…”

  “Okay, Mama.”

  “Mrow, just one more!”

  “Maybe tomorrow, Mr. Cat.”

  Sophie looked back to the General Secretary.

  “However,” Brenda said, “we’re still quite busy with the dairy cows, so we have no one available to send to aid France in ending the Revolution.”

  Drat!

  Sophie held it in, but drat!

  Her job was to get help…

  “That said, Lily has been awarded the Order of Friend of Peoples, and she’s proven herself in Texas—”

  “Don’t you mean the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas?” Sophie interrupted.

  Brenda rolled her eyes. “Yes, the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas, Lily got an award there, too.”

  Sophie nodded.

  The little things were important!

  “So we intended to have Lily represent us and act as a mediator between the French Nobility and the Revolutionaries, to bring about peace and Friendliness…”

  Lily looked up at this.

  “Yeah! And so you guys can start selling wheat again!”

  “Wheat? Whatever for?” Sophie asked.

  Not cake? Not bread?

  “Yeah! I’m trying to run a business, and the buns for my Lilyburgers are too expensive! I was losing money on every Lilyburger! I need the French Revolution to end so I can expand my business!”

  This was…

  High level!

  Sophie was a young Duchess, and she had learned her manners…

  But she hadn’t learned the business side of things yet!

  Her butlers were handling it for her.

  But this girl was about her age, and she was already running a business!

  It was impressive.

  “Do most girls our age run businesses in… where was it you said you came from?”

  Lily shook her head. “No, they don’t, they usually go to school, or play! But I want to pay for my parents’ retirement…”

  Lily explained how she had come to be in Wisconsin, solving Dairy Cow Strikes and so on.

  And, at the center of it all, one thing demanded Sophie’s attention the most.

  “I’ve never heard of a ‘Lilyburger’ before,” she said. “I’d quite like to try one, now.”

  And so, Brenda put the order in.

  Lilyburgers, Friendly Fries, and Apple Juice for everyone!