She never knew why she got into the habit of counting her white roses on her morning stroll but it was habit no less. She would let the sun spur her and warm her pale skin, hum a French song from her past and see to every inch of her estate, especially the garden.
Jane spent most of her time there be it reading poetry or grading paper after paper of her many pupils, you could always find Jane the lily of Maxwell estate seated among the other blooming flowers.
Why was she a lily? Because her older sister Claudette or Mary as she was better known had been the beauty and the rose of Maxwell when she resided there and it was known that Jane had always been the embodiment of humility and devotion; why else would she still be an old maid with her winning personality? Because she was happily devoted to one man.
When she smelt her white roses that morning and counted them she found that one had been clipped from the bush. He had been there. In fact, he was the only one who had free access to her garden without much scolding. But sadly she knew when he would clip the white roses they were for wooing a fair young miss that was not herself.
Jane got up from her little garden bench and let her large flowered garden hat fall to her back, resting by a pink bow round her neck as she made the truck to the neighboring estate where she found him bent out of shape once again, seated gloomily watching a carriage roll away with his love in it. Jane contemplated throwing her little black poetry book at the back of his curly head to spur him back to life like she would when they were children, but she sighed and said affectionately. "Squire, you miserable old sod you have been in my roses again."
Her childhood love only grunted over his shoulder. "Do not call me old Janey." He moped. "I already feel my age so strongly." At this Jane went to his side, took his hand and sat with him. Roger gave her hand a light squeeze as he continued to stare off into the distance. He had been cold and aloof and even sometimes crash to his friends during his battle to gain love, but never once had Jane turned her back on him. He loved Hetta no doubt, but there was always this nagging voice in the back of his mind that spoke just as highly and lovingly about Jane Maxwell his neighbor.
"You are old and you are a sod no matter how you deny it Roger." Jane mused in her bluntly honest but adoring tone. He turned his manly face towards her and asked with a light chuckle. "Why are you so mean spirited towards me?"
"So that I can do this." Jane only smiled and leant over to kiss his cheek as an explanation; it was out of love that she teased him and annoyed him like a school girl. She got to her feet and offered her hand to him. "Come on, lets see if we can't get this broken heart on the mend again." And it was out of love that she would continue to let him clip flowers for another woman.