She’d filled her spare time by looking after her husband’s aged aunt, working in the local charity shop, singing in the choir at church and helping out wherever required in the community. With what sometimes seemed like dizzying speed Ellie had been widowed, inherited money and property, and then remarried. Sometimes she felt like the old woman in the song who’d woken out of a nap to find her skirts had been cut off short, and said, ‘Lawks, but this is none of I!’ On the whole Ellie had adapted well to the demands of her new position, though she sometimes found it a struggle to turn her mind to business when she’d far rather be working in the garden. Rose, their elderly housekeeper, had once loved pottering about among the flowers but had recently found it too much for her to prune and dig, and had concentrated on the care of plants in the conservatory at the back of the house . . . which meant that Ellie could have a go instead. There was, of course, a gardener; but he couldn’t be trusted to deadhead the roses and select fragrant plants for the herbaceous border, or to do much of anything if he could get away with it.
