Death Among the Ruins Read Online Free PDF Page B

determined to hold fast to my own methods.”
    “Hmm,” replied her sister skeptically. “At any rate, Tom Rowlandson might poke gentle fun at you, but he would never dream of insulting me .”
    “I did not look upon that as gentle fun.”
    “Oh, surely you’re not holding a grudge against him!”
    “Nothing of the sort,” Belinda replied. “I merely said I did not look upon it as gentle fun.”
    “Well, then, what did you regard it as?”
    “Free advertising.”

Chapter 6
     
    T HE B ILLY -B OX B RIBE
     
    T he day following saw no wind, and the city cautiously awakened to brittle sunlight. It was cold, though. Walking their horses through Green Park after a good ride, Belinda and Arabella passed that farm that was so amusing to visit in the summer, when one had a mind to play the dairymaid and milk a cow.
    “Are you certain you wouldn’t like to curl your fingers around a nice, warm cow teat?” asked Arabella.
    “Yes, I am certain,” Belinda replied, stooping to pick up a brilliantly colored leaf. “My gloves are not coming off until we reach home. The mere thought of exposing my hands at these temperatures makes me want to shriek!”
    The fall foliage was particularly fine that year, and Arabella marked, with pleasurable surprise, just how the trees were effecting their seasonal adjustments. Some turned red or gold or flaming orange on the bottom first, the colors gradually creeping upward, like a blush. Others began their transformation at the top, and the change seeped down from there. Still others altered their outer leaves first, and she even found some that were changing in random clumps.
    Belinda was not bothered with the “how” of the leaves, as all her attention was for the moment focused upon collecting the prettiest.
    “Are these for your album?” Arabella enquired.
    “No,” said her sister. “I am making a billy-box.”
    Belinda was in the habit of decorating small receptacles at the end of her love affairs. Named for the first man ever to inspire their construction, they were packed with memorabilia from the lately beloved, and might contain anything from billets-doux to withered apple cores, including sketches not good enough for her album, miscellaneous locks of hair, nail parings, and tobacco pipe dottle, tapped out and left on a saucer. These collections, once complete, were duly buried in the garden, and Arabella had once made the observation that future history buffs, digging in the area of Brompton Park, would get the thrill of their lives when they uncovered Belinda’s beautiful memory coffins, and then feel so disappointed upon opening them and discovering the unfailingly mundane, and occasionally disgusting contents, that for the sake of their mental health they would be obliged to take up some other hobby without the attendant risks of extreme emotional fluctuations.
    But Belinda had not had a serious affair for some time, unless one counted Lord Carrington. And one couldn’t count him, after all, as he had feet that splayed out like a duck’s, and cut a ridiculous figure on the dance floor.
    “I don’t require one just now,” she explained, with reference to her boxes. “But I like to stock them up, so that I need not feel pressured to make a billy-box when I am prostrate with grief. This one will be useful should I ever have occasion to terminate a romance in the autumn.”
    “How many have you at present?” Arabella inquired.
    “Five or six.”
    “Would you let me have one?”
    “Why? You think they’re silly!”
    “I think they are beautiful,” said Arabella gravely. “I merely deplore the waste of burying such beautiful things in the ground, crammed with, if you’ll pardon me, nothing but trash. However, in the event that you will vouchsafe to give me one, I promise to fill it with lovely items and take it to Mr. Kendrick. He has a cold just now, and wants cheering up.”
    “Oh! By all means! He shall have the box I am currently working on! It is to be