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not one of the stories I made up to keep you both amused on wet days!
    Rose tried again to ease the crick in her neck. She enjoyed writing letters to family and friends, but however hard she tried to write slowly, she always ended up scribbling furiously and then her hand, her arm, her neck, or all three, started aching.
    ‘Arthritis, I suppose,’ she said wryly, as she cast her eye beyond the open door, pleased to see new growth in the flowerbed she and John had created last autumn.
    A new ground floor room with a large bedroom above had been added to the house last Spring. It was ready just in time for Hannah arriving in the summer with all four children. When the fence was moved to accommodate the extension, the old flowerbed looked so strange. After twenty-two years, the precious cuttings brought from their home at Salter’s Grange had grown into shrubs tall enough to take the light from the windows of the new sitting room.
    She sighed as she remembered the struggle it had been to take them out. She wasn’t having someone come to do a job that needed such care and thought, but afterwards her back ached for days.
    When she visited her good friend Elizabeth and her doctor husband, she’d asked Richard about the pain and stiffness in her neck and the limp that sometimes slowed up her housework.
    ‘Rose dear, we are all getting older. Even you. And you’ve worked hard all your life. You’re boundto get bits and pieces of arthritis here and there. There’s not much any of us can do about it,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Rest, if you can. Try aspirin. Elizabeth says a hot water bottle is the best remedy, but I’ve pointed out the success of her method may be that in order to apply the said hot water bottle she has to sit down. Neither you, nor my dear Elizabeth, have been much given to sitting down if there’s work to be done.’
    He paused and grinned. ‘Maybe you could write more letters.’
    She laughed as she recalled the moment, always cheered by the thought of Elizabeth and the late marriage to Richard that had brought such joy to them both. Their only child, James, was but two months older than Hannah’s eldest boy, Francis. She took up her pen and told her daughter about his recent successes at school. Then she added an account of the happy visit to Selina and Thomas Scott at Salter’s Grange, making only a brief mention of Martha and Sam in passing.
    You must be very proud indeed of Teddy taking his seat in the Lords while he is still so young. I’m sure he will do good work. I can imagine him and our old friend Lord Altrincham finding the means to reduce factory working hours even further. Sarah speaks of him often.
    Does Lord Altrincham never consider retiring? I’ve no idea what age he is, but he must be older than your father-in-law. I know Lady Anne has pressed him to retire for years now, particularly since he’s had trouble with the leg he hurt when he was shot at, back in the 80s. But with no success!
    Richard says old injuries have a nasty way of playing up as you get older. I do hope Harrington and Lady Anne are still able to ride those lovely green paths at Ashleigh together. Which reminds me. Are they planning to come up to town to see you while the boys are at home, or daren’t you leave your decorators to go and visit them?
    She paused as she dipped her pen in the inkpot and listened carefully. She glanced at the clock. Only eleven, far too early for John, but it did sound like a motor on the hill. It would hardly be Sarah. She worked at her table all morning and called in the afternoon on her way to the post office, or to one of the mills.
    Before she’d even put her pen down, a vehicle stopped outside, footsteps hurried along the garden path and Sarah stood in the doorway.
    ‘Sarah dear,’ she said, taking one glance at the pale, drawn face. ‘Is anything wrong?’
    Sarah nodded silently, crossed the room and threw herself down in her father’s fireside chair.
    ‘I’ve bad