Free (10/13) Friends at Thrush Green by Miss Read

people were both stone deaf towards the end, and that was bad enough.'
    'Losing any of your five senses is dreadful,' agreed Winnie, stuffing Agnes's letter back into its envelope.
    'Have you ever thought,' commented Jenny, busily swabbing the draining board, 'that if you can't see you're called blind , and if you can't hear you're called deaf, but if you can't smell anything, like Bill Cartwright, there's no word for it?'
    'Oh, but there is,' Winnie informed her. 'My old uncle always said he was snoof!'

    A little later that morning, Winnie was pegging out some washing when she was hailed by her neighbour Phyllida Hurst who lived next door.
    Winnie approached the useful gap in their common hedge, where one of the hawthorn bushes had expired and never been adequately replaced.
    'I've promised to do the flowers for the church this week,' said the younger woman, 'and I wondered if you could spare some of your copper beech twigs.'
    'Of course, Phil. Come round whenever you like. Is there anything else of use here?'
    'Can I come and see? All I appear to have here are dwarf begonias and nasturtiums. Not quite the stuff for church decorations really.'
    She squeezed through the gap, and the two women paced round the garden, assessing Winnie's floral produce.
    It was perfectly true, Winnie thought, that the next door garden never did as well as her own. Something to do with the soil, no doubt, but also the several years of complete neglect before the Hursts had taken it over.
    The former occupants of Tullivers had been an elderly couple, Admiral Josiah Trigg and his sister, Lucy. To be sure, Josiah had tended his flower border assiduously, and a jobbing gardener had cut the grass and hedges in his time, but when the admiral had died Lucy had done nothing to the garden.
    Hedges became spinneys, lawns became meadows, and the seeds of thistle, dandelion, and willow herb floated into neighbouring gardens. Brambles and nettles invaded the place, and the inhabitants of Thrush Green grieved over Tullivers' sad condition.
    Nothing had been done to the house either for that matter, Winnie remembered. She had been perturbed by the condition of her neighbour's house; the grimy windows, paths and steps, and the utter neglect of all that was inside.
    It was not as if Lucy Trigg were senile, far from it. Winnie knew her as a formidable bridge player and solver of crossword puzzles, and she had trenchant views on current events. But her surroundings meant nothing to her, and her meals were as erratic as dear old Dotty Harmer's at Lulling Woods: an apple crunched as she read the newspaper, or a doorstep of brown bread spread with honey, as she filled in the crossword, sufficed Lucy.
    It had been a relief to everyone when a young woman, then Phyllida Prior, had taken over the house and set about tidying up, with the help of her little boy and a succession of local amateur part-time gardeners. It was Harold Shoosmith who had really done most of the reclamation in the early days, and although the garden was much improved, it was not until Phil married again, an older man called Frank Hurst, that the place became trim, although it was never as fruitful as some of the other much-loved gardens at Thrush Green.
    Winnie and Phil collected an armful of beech sprays, some roses, lupins and Canterbury bells.
    'It seems a motley lot,' observed Winnie, surveying their harvest. 'I suppose you really want some trailing stuff for the pedestals. You can quite see why the Victorians liked smilax to drape everywhere.'
    'This is splendid,' Phil assured her. 'I'm only in charge of the humbler efforts at the foot of the lectern and the font. The real high-fliers like Muriel Fuller are the only people let loose on things like pedestals.'
    'That reminds me,' said Winnie, sitting on the garden seat and patting the space beside her. 'I heard from Dorothy and Agnes today. They do seem to have settled very happily at Barton.'
    'They'd make friends wherever they went,' replied