Aldyth's inheritance

MRS. BLAND'S house stood in the High Street of the little town of Woodham. It was an old-fashioned, sedate-looking house, with a bow-window projecting on each side of the front door, and two rows of white-curtained windows above; but there was nothing prim about the garden which lay at the back of the house. This garden, with its wealth of sweet-scented flowers, its fruit trees, its sunflowers and hollyhocks standing out in rich contrast to the mellow red of the old walls, was a delightful place in which to spend a warm September afternoon.

Elizabeth Emily Charlton was born in 1852 the daughter of Congregational minister Rev. John M. Charlton. At the young age of eleven her first production was published by a children's magazine. Charlton would go on to pen fifty books under the pseudonym 'Eglanton Thorne' mostly for the Religious Tract Society. She lived most of her life in London. While there, she was 'an enthusiastic worker in a West London mission.' She never married and died on 17 September 1907 in Plymouth.