Chapter V

Rose Otway sat in the garden of the Trellis
House, under the wide-branched cedar of Lebanon
which was, to the thinking of most people in the
Close, that garden's only beauty. For it was just a
wide lawn, surrounded on three sides by a very high
old brick wall, under which ran an herbaceous border
to which Rose devoted some thought and a good deal
of time.

The great cedar rose majestically far above its
surroundings; and when you stood at one of the
windows of the Trellis House, and saw how wide the
branches of the tree spread, you realised that the
garden was a good deal bigger than it appeared at
first sight.

Rose sat near a low wicker table on which in an
hour or so Anna would come out and place the tea-tray.
Spread out across the girl's knee was a square
of canvas, a section of a bed-spread, on which was
traced an intricate and beautiful Jacobean design.
Rose had already been working at it for six months,
and she hoped to have finished it by the 14th of
December, her mother's birthday. She enjoyed doing
this beautiful work, of which the pattern had been lent
to her by a country neighbour who collected such
things.

How surprised Rose would have been on this early
August afternoon could she have foreseen that this
cherished piece of work, on which she had already

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v?