(8/13) At Home in Thrush Green Read Free

done,' said Ella with spirit. 'Tell you what, I'll take it home and put it right for you.'
    Dotty lowered her skinny legs to the ground, and pulled up her wrinkled stockings.
    'Oh, don't bother, Ella dear. I quite like the white lines. Rather a pretty effect. In any case, I'm rather busy sorting out a drawerful of old photos at the moment, and I think I'll put this work aside till the winter.'
    She took possession of the frame and thrust it under the sofa. There was a yelp, and Flossie the spaniel emerged, looking hurt.
    'Oh, my poor love!' cried Dotty. 'I had no idea you were there! Let me find you a biscuit as a peace offering.'
    She scrabbled behind a cushion on the sofa head and produced a crumpled paper bag. From it she withdrew a piece of Rich Tea biscuit, and offered it to the dog. It was warmly received.
    'Now,' said Dotty, rising to her feet and wiping her hands down her skirt. 'Come and see the new building.'
    'Aunt Dotty,' protested Connie, now entering the room, 'there's nothing to see yet. Let Ella and Dimity have a rest after their walk.'
    'No, let's see it,' said Ella, stumping along behind Dotty. 'How long have the men been here?'
    The four women surveyed the piles of building material scattered about the garden. Dimity thought the sight depressing. Planks were propped against the fruit trees. Piles of bricks lurched drunkenly on what was once a lawn. Buckets, wheelbarrows, hods and spades all jostled together, and the inevitable cement mixer lurked behind the lilac bushes which were already covered in white dust.
    'Full of hope, isn't it?' cried Dotty, eyes shining through her spectacles. 'Of course, there will be rather a mess when the thatcher comes. All that straw, you know, and his little hazel spars. I'm so looking forward to that. I shall have a chair out here and watch him at work. I think it must be rather a lonely job up on a roof. A little conversation should help him along.'
    No one dared to comment on this appalling plan, but Connie hastily blew her nose, and looked towards the distant Lulling Woods.
    'And when do you hope to see it complete?' asked Dimity.
    'Edward says it should be ready by the winter,' replied Dotty. 'It's not a very big project, after all. The garage will be there.' She pointed to the powdered lilac bushes. 'And behind that will be a sitting room, or is it the larder, Connie dear?'
    'The sitting room. And a bedroom above with a bathroom.'
    'For Kit and Connie,' explained Dotty. 'A large bedroom, you understand. I think married people should have plenty of air at night. Two of them, in one room, you see. Now I only need that small room of mine. Plenty of cubic space for one sleeper. If ever I married, of course, I should have the wall knocked down between the two small rooms at the other end of the house.'
    The hope of matrimony for dear old Dotty, now in her eighties, seemed so remote to all three ladies that they made no comment upon these wild conjectures, but contented themselves with picking their way among the muddle, and making polite noises.
    'We really came to collect the milk,' said Ella at last, tired of stepping round piles of bricks, and circumventing wheelbarrows.
    'It's all ready,' said Connie, turning towards the kitchen door.
    Ella and Dotty followed the younger woman, but Dimity lingered in the garden.
    The air was warm, and heavy with the scent of hay lying in the field beyond Dotty's hedge. Soon the baler would be thumping the crop into neat oblongs, grass and flowers and aromatic leaves compacted together, to carry the smell and comfort of summer into the winter byres where the store cattle stood, or to the snowy fields and the hungry sheep.
    Of all the seasons, summer was the one that Dimity loved best. Thin and frail, she dreaded the cold Cotswold winter which dragged on, more often than not, into a chilling April. But a sunny June, with its many blessings of roses, hayfields, strawberries and long warm evenings, raised Dimity's spirits to near