A shady bough of a jacaranda tree hung its branches of purple flowers over the garden.  A little blue wren  made a sibilant note .  Eleanor  sat on the garden seat with her sketchs.   Her compendium fell on the lawn, and an old sepia photograph lay there.

She picked up the black and white photograph and studied it closely.  The plate was the same as in a frame on the mantelpiece in the drawing room at the Manor and the same as in her reverie.  It had Fanny dressed in a bonnet and in a lacey white frock outfit  and petticoat with primrose gloves, swinging in a garden seat.  A book of homilies in her hand and a keepsake diary.  The letters that are enclosing her diary Eleanor reads to herself, and its leafs open the window to an illicit dream.  She sees herself in it that  splendid late morning, and diarises about her dream. ......by  julie Ralphs