This is my first try. Thanks to Nevinc for making the text more readable.
Winter, 1817.
White Abbey was some five miles northeast of Monmouth in the Wye Valley. The antiquity was all in the name. There had once been an Abbey, but it had been gone for a long time. The old Abbey had burned down during Henry VII back in the 15th Century. The present White Grinshill stone house was built during the reign of Elizabeth and was very elegant and square in a fine park. The park itself was full of rather ghostly-looking trees and today's misty weather merely added to the eeriness.
Flora Thorpe didn't like to clean the library of the White Abbey. The library walls covered with dark polished oak paneling and the dreary stone flooring was always spooky to her. Maybe the library in Mr. Fallows personal home was to the left or right in the passage she couldn't be sure. But as Mr. Fallows maid she had no choice but to go in there and clean, oh how she dreaded it.
When she entered the room, a man was sitting reading a book before a cheerful fire, mumbling, and waving his left hand in the air.
" Gleaming nymph sleeping
awaking's from my worship
as the finch its chirping
the sun lies down
my fiery pipes plays,
a Lily among thistles.
Please dance with flowers
please dance with me
Water me down
Sister Thorn and Thistles..."
He looked up at her in a surprised silence. His astonishment was accented by his long face on a rather thin body.
"Excuse me sir, I was told to clean and dust this room," said miss Thorpe politely.
"umph... It can be helped. I guess this room could need some cleaning. Please carry on. I'll do my business elsewhere."
Even as a new maid Flora found his behavior evasive and in line with his character. He was the master of the house but behaved more like a subdued subject. In her eyes it was a quite strange.
Robert Fallow stood up and walked out the room, and miss Thorpe started dusting the leather bound books, oak shelves, and tables. On one of tea tables Mr. Fallows had left a book, bound in plain leather with the title stamped in neat silver capital letters. "Language of Tree." It was book of magic by the famous magician Richard Harrison
1
.
Miss Thorpe noticed in how the light from the three high windows didn't agree with the gloomy weather outside, as there was sun in the park. There was dust hovering just above the book, almost sparkling in the air.
Even though she continued dusting, the book stayed on her mind as if it were a living presence. She kept thinking about how this room was so spooky.
"There is nothing to be afraid of," she told herself, you're an adult. The ghosts are more afraid of you than you are of them. Besides, the book can't hurt you."'
To prove her point she opened the book on the table, browsed to a random page, and read aloud:
"Come Lily of the Valley