Everything to Gain by Barbara Taylor Bradford Read Free Book Online

beautiful, have such great character.
    I am extremely partial to this particular wall on our property, mostly because it is home to a number of small creatures. I know for a fact that two chipmunks live inside its precincts, as well as a baby rabbit and a black snake. Although I know the chipmunks well and have spotted the bunny from time to time, I have never actually seen the snake. But our gardener, Anna, has, and so have the twins. At least, that is what they claim, most vociferously.
    Ever since my childhood, I have loved nature and the wild creatures who inhabit the countryside, and I have encouraged Jamie and Lissa to respect all living things, to treasure the animals, birds, and insects that frequent Indian Meadows.
    Unconsciously, and very often without understanding what they are doing, some children can be terribly cruel, and it always makes me furious when I see them hurting small, defenseless animals, pulling wings off butterflies, grinding their heels into earthworms and snails, throwing stones at birds. I made my mind up long before the twins were born that no child of mine would ever inflict pain on any living thing.
    To make nature more personal, to bring it closer to them, I invented stories about our little friends who inhabit the garden wall. I tell Jamie and Lissa tales about Algernon, the friendly black snake, who has a weakness for chocolate-covered cherries and wishes he owned a candy store; about Tabitha and Henry, the two chipmunks, married with no children, who want to adopt; and about Angelica, the baby bunny rabbit, who harbors an ambition to be in the Fifth Avenue Easter Parade.
    Jamie and Lissa had come to love these stories of mine; they can't get enough of them, in fact, and I have to repeat them constantly. In order to satisfy my children, I'm forever inventing new adventures, which entails quite a stretch of the imagination on my part.
    It's struck me several times lately that perhaps I should write down the stories and draw pictures to illustrate them. Perhaps I will, but only for Jamie and Lissa. This idea suddenly took hold of me. What a wonderful surprise it would be for the twins if I created a picture book for each of them, and put the books in their Christmas stockings.
    I groaned inside; how ridiculous to be thinking of Christmas on this suffocatingly hot summer's day. But the summer will soon be drawing to an end; it always does disappear very quickly after July Fourth weekend. Then Thanksgiving will be upon us before I can blink, with Christmas not far behind.
    This year we are planning to spend Christmas in England. We will be staying with Diana at her house in West Tanfield in the Yorkshire dales. Andrew and I are really looking forward to it, and the children are excited. They are hoping it will snow so that they can go sledding with their father. He's promised to take them on the runs he favored when he was a child; and he is planning to teach them to skate, providing Diana's pond has frozen solid.
    I was ruminating on our winter vacation ten minutes later when Nora poked her head around the sunroom door. "It's Sarah on the phone," she called.
    "Thanks," I called back, but she had already disappeared.
    I slid off the wall and went inside. Flopping down on a chair, I picked up the phone, which sat on a nearby end table. "Hi, Sarah. When are you coming out here?"
    "I don't think I will be coming," she replied.
    I thought she sounded woeful, a little glum for her; she was normally so cheerful.
    "What's wrong?" I asked, gripping the phone a bit tighter, instinctively aware that all was not right.
    We had been best friends all of our lives, ever since we were babies in prams being walked on Park Avenue by our mothers, who were also friends. We had attended the same kindergarten and then Miss Hewitt's. Later on we had gone off to Radcliffe together, and we have always been extremely close, inseparable. I know Sarah Elizabeth Thomas as well as I know myself, and so I understood that