Clarice did not stifle her laughter, and Belinda could still hear it when she was halfway up the staircase.
They are cruel, but they are not wrong.Her shoulders sagged as she weakly pulled Miss Hartley along.I’ve achieved nothing though I've been in London for ten days! And even if Dora does agree to help me, her parents probably don’t think she needs a companion. If they did, they would have situated her with one already.
At the top of the stairs now, she glimpsed Mrs Hartley down the hallway, and went after her, though she dragged her feet.
I'll probably be back in Trippingham in no time at all. But if Mr Turner’s eye hasn’t caught on another bonnet, how will I refuse him without giving offence?
Miss Hartley cleared her throat delicately.
“How are you acquainted with the Misses Chaffee?” she asked, cutting through the haze of Belinda's chagrin. Ahead, her mother's blindingly lemon gown disappeared through a low doorway.
“They are distant relations by marriage.”
“Not distant enough,” Dora quipped, and Lindy felt a little less alone as they ducked into the opera box.
“An excellent vantage point, think you not, girls?” Mrs Hartley was leaning over the railing, craning her neck this way and that, trying to take in everything all at once.
As Belinda sank into the nearest seat, she could see that Dora was squinting purposefully at her, as if trying to read her expression.
“You oughtn’t pay those sinister sisters any mind.” The girl shrugged. “Unless you are determined that we might laugh at them together.”
This wisdom, on its legs of goodwill, heartened Lindy, and she opened her mouth to say so, but Mrs Hartley was done admiring the environs on her own.
“Look there, girls!” she cried, pushing the box’s curtain aside further. “I told you we’d be able to see the players while they’re waiting in the wings!”
As the two younger women answered with feigned appreciation, a sharp cry rose up from the stalls below.
“What is it?” Dora asked.
Looking, Belinda saw that the girl who had been selling fruit out on the portico was standing by the front row of seats, hugging her basket to her chest.
“Stop him!” she hollered, pointing at a boy who was dashing away from her. Clutched in his hand was a shiny, red apple.
“A coster’s been robbed!” Mrs Hartley cried as every eye in the auditorium pinned itself on the fleeing boy.
Belinda watched, fluently relaying the scene to Dora as it unfolded.
With squirrel-like agility, the thief scampered up onto the stage, and shot towards the back as if to make an exit, but a broad man stepped out from behind the curtain, blocking his way. Spinning around, he careered towards stage-left but a second stout brute appeared there.
A collective chuckle rose up from the audience as the justice they desired seemed inevitable.
“The rascal thought he might disappear before us all?” Mrs Hartley scoffed.
The boy was pacing now, back and forth between the strongmen until he stopped in the very middle of the stage, his face full of fear.
“There’s no getting away, you sprite!” someone called out.
Staring at what he had stolen, as if pondering his transgression, the boy cast the apple upwards, then caught it with his other hand. A second time, he tossed it from right to left, higher this time.
Bellowing with indignation, the fruit-seller flung off her shawl and, with surprising accuracy, threw a second apple directly at the lad. He caught it and handily incorporated it into the arcs rising over his head.
A quiet fell over the cavernous theatre.
“Enough!” roared one of the men as they closed in on the thief from either side.
The costermonger mounted the stage and pitched a third, fourth, then fifth apple at the boy in quick succession. As the sure-handed fellow caught them all, then tossed them upwards, smatterings of laughter broke out amongst the audience.
“He’s a juggler! He tricked us all!” Belinda told Dora.
