030/365 09/20/2025

The afternoon breezes had begun to stir, and the smell of roses and lavender rode the rustling branches up from the garden and into the drawing room. Aunt Dowager carefully threaded her needle through the <ring thing used for needlepoint> and listened to the rhythmic lilt as Elizabeth recited her verse. 

Oh these poor girls, she thought. And without reprimand from her mind as she was known throughout Hollipshire as a woman capable of honest assessment and blunt consideration. She looked up from the needlepoint to Ruth in the corner, struggling to capture any semblance of the outside world with her watercolors. And poor inelegant Lucy struggling through finger exercises on the harpsichord, her lips rounding around each letter of her scales.