Free The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean

lottery and so was able to marry his childhood sweetheart:
    Cont’d from Chapter 1
    Said Mr. Leclerc, brushing the rice from the shoulders of his fashionable Paris suit: “Before my good luck, Fleur’s parents would drive me from their door, throwing plant pots and tennis rackets, and shouting, ‘Begone! You are far too poor! Our daughter deserves better!’ I was severely injured on several occasions.”
    The bride told L’Étoile Sud : “I always knew love would find a way. We were willing to wait a hundred years to be together, but we are glad we did not have to.”
    The couple are honeymooning in Japan.
    By PEPPER PAPIER
    TREASURE TROVE IN SECRET BAY
    MARSEILLE—A wooden chest containing priceless pirate treasure has been found by vacationers in shallow water off the Provençal coast. The sea chest, thought to have fallen overboard from a Turkish galley in the thirteenth century, contains gold plunder and gemstones big as pigeon eggs, according to an eyewitness. The find also includes an embalmed parrot. “Stomach of bird is full of doubloons,” said Professor Euclid Valparaiso. “We investigate possibility is—how you say?—hush money.”
    The find will be studied, and then shared among the friends who found it. The exact position of the cove is being kept a close secret, to foil would-be treasure hunters.
    By PEPPER PAPIER
    MAN THOUGHT DEAD RETURNS FROM WAR
    QUOMBIER—A soldier thought to have died in the Siege of Paris returned to his home in thetiny hamlet of Quombier last Wednesday.
    Paul Blois, thought to have died in the siege, astonished friends and relations when he rode into the village on a bicycle.
    “I thought I was seeing a ghost,” stated Manon Ballon, 41, “but he was smoking a pipe, so I knew I wasn’t.”
    Paul’s mother, Aimée, 91, remarked: “He has changed somewhat, but I knew him at once. He is my boy. I said all along he was not gone. I would have known if my little boy was dead.”
    Paul’s fiancée, Mireille, was so upset by reports of her fiancé’s “death” that she never
    Cont’d in Chapter 1
    TODAY’S CHILDREN MORE AGREEABLE, SAYS GOVERNMENT REPORT
    OSLO—Young people are kinder and more charming than fifty years ago, says a shock report issued by the Norwegian government yesterday. The latest statistics have shown that children do not steal, fight, talk back or tell liesas much as their grandparents did.
    Though others dispute his results, Dr. Gustav Guberson of Oslo University claims that better food and more churchgoing have “turned our young folk into good citizens.” The words “thank you” and “please” are used more than 80,000 times during the average child-
    Cont’d in Chapter 1
    “Where’s Quombier?” called the typesetter from the door of the setting room. “I never heard of it.”
    “Eight houses, two barns, and a water mill,” replied Pepper at once, because, in his head (if not in person), he had been to Quombier and interviewed Paul Blois and his ancient mother and joyful fiancée. He had shared in their happiness, even though, strictly speaking , these people did not exist.
    He made them up. Every last one of them. He invented their names and their ages—even sometimes their villages. He invented their tremendous good luck or selfless bravery, their goodness, and their marvelous adventures. Like little flares they were lit one by one, to brighten up the lives of L’Étoile ’s readers and tomake them feel that perhaps, after all, the world was not as bleak and lonely and angry and scary and hard as they feared.
    As he feared.
    SEA MONSTER IS DECLARED EXTINCT
    PARIS—The kraken, once the terror of every ship’s crew, has been officially declared extinct. The Institute of Marine Biology in Paris yesterday announced that the heavy shipping of recent years has emptied the oceans of all giant squid.
    A spokesman said, “We have seen the last of these dangerous, destructive pests. They will be eating no more ships from now on.”
    By