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stopper and sniffed the contents, which were sufficiently pungent to penetrate his blocked nasal passages.
    “Brandy?” he enquired.
    “I really don’t know what Mrs. Moly puts in there. The ingredients are secret. It is wonderful stuff, though. She always makes some for Belinda and me whenever we are under the weather.”
    . . . A few good books (not Bibles).
    . . . Newspapers.
    . . . Dice and a cup: “Miss Beaumont, you are trying to lead me astray!”
    . . . A little clasp knife, made in Switzerland, with all manner of clever attachments, which Arabella intended to borrow as soon as possible.
    . . . A packet of tea, with a lemon and a small bottle of honey.
    . . . And finally (this was Charles’s contribution), a book of improper jokes, entitled Very Bad Stories.
    “Ah!” cried Kendrick, delightedly stroking the cover. “Do you know, this reminds me of a joke I heard once, about an unpleasant old nun. She mistreated the girls who worked in the laundry . . .”
    “Laundry?”
    “A Magdalene laundry, it was . . .”
    “Forgive me, Mr. K., but this does not sound at all the sort of joke I might appreciate. Doyle, my chambermaid, labored for years in one of those terrible places. And I doubt whether she would enjoy this story, either.”
    “Oh, yes, I know, but if you will just bear with me . . . the girls revenged themselves on the nun by adding extra starch to her habit, you see.”
    “It is so good to find you thriving and healthy again, Mr. Kendrick,” said Arabella. “From your note I expected to find quite the opposite. I suppose you will be out of bed by tomorrow?”
    The rector seemed to shrink before her eyes.
    “Heavens, Miss Beaumont! I . . . I do not think so! I am feeling quite . . .”
    “ . . . well enough to tell jokes, and sufficiently hardheaded to force them upon your disobliging company,” she finished, her eyes twinkling.
    “Oh. But that was just a momentary flash of good health, you know, at the unexpected pleasure of seeing you. No, I really am quite seriously ill; this happens every autumn. I am susceptible to river miasmas.”
    “That is a shame.”
    “Yes. Thank you for saying so.”
    “Because, you see, Charles, Belinda, and I are leaving for Italy Tuesday week. I had hoped to find you well enough to accompany us, as our guest. But I suppose you are really too ill to be moved.”
    There was nothing Kendrick could say, and so he said nothing, but his face was an eloquent record of the interior agonies he was undergoing. Arabella toyed with him for a bit whilst she gathered up her gloves and prepared to leave the room. Then in the doorway she half-turned and said,
    “If, by some miracle, you are better by the time we leave, perhaps you would care to join us.”

Chapter 8
     
    C AT A MONGST THE F IGPECKERS
     
    U nlike most persons of her station, Tilda Crouch, Lustings’s scullery maid, could not conceive of anyone with a better job than herself. Of course, Tilda’s wits were not all they might have been, but the fact that she was so happy in her work compensated for any discrepancy between this particular girl and her brighter but less satisfied counterparts in other households. Nevertheless, a scullery maid’s lot is neither pleasant nor easy. So, when Arabella informed Tilda that henceforth she was to feed the birds in the aviatory, the child was ecstatic.
    Readers of long standing will recall that the aviatory was Arabella’s combination aviary and conservatory: a magical paradise of exotic plants and tropical birds, with a columned rotunda in the center. The task of feeding the birds had formerly devolved on the cook, but when Mrs. Molyneux actually suggested roasting Arabella’s little bulbuls and precious bee-eaters, the mistress had decided to re-organize the duty roster.
    There was, surely, no happier scullion in all England. The birds were happier, too, for Tilda didn’t just feed and water them; she actually sat and spoke to her charges, and they, in turn,