The Witches of Holmwood 2/7

Eve noticed both Jennifer Jane and her mum’s surprise. “Dressing up clothes for amateur dramatics,” she explained, “is there a group in the village?”

Mary and Eve began discussing the local amenities, while Jennifer Jane sat quietly thinking about the contents of the bundle of clothes. After a while she wandered off without disturbing the others and went to offer the workmen some biscuits from her tray.

Then she stayed and watched them unloading the van. Everything else looked perfectly ordinary. Tables and chairs, bedroom furniture, kitchen utensils, in fact all the normal contents of a house.
Boxes full of gardening tools came last and were put into the garage for the time being.

The equipment was very impressive, far more so than the simple tools her father used. All the spades and forks were well used but made in the very best stainless steel.

There was a small ride-on mower, where the driver sat over the roller and steered the machine by its handles. A large shredder for turning small branches into compost sized pieces, a couple of very smart looking birch brooms, a blower for moving leaves into heaps and a machine rather like a very large vacuum cleaner to pick them up.

‘Wait a moment,’ she thought, ‘two birch brooms?’ Everything else was so modern and complicated, whatever would the new neighbours want with a birch broom? Not only that but why on earth would they need two of them, neither looked as if it had ever been used! She went back to her mother just as she was getting up to leave.

“It’s been ever so nice meeting you both,” said Eve, “I expect we’ll see a lot more of each other once we’ve settled in. I do hope you won’t mind too much about the party, we’ll be as quiet as we can and perhaps you’ll be able to come to the next one.”