 CRANFORD. In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons. All the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears. He is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentleman, they are not at Cranford. What could they do if they were there? The surgeon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford, but every man cannot be a surgeon. For keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them, for frightening away little boys who look wistfully at the said flowers through the railings, for rushing out at the geese that occasionally venture into the gardens if the gates are left open, for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or arguments, for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody's affairs in the parish, for keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable order, for kindness somewhat dictatorial to the poor, and real tender good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient. A man, as one of them observed to me once, is so in the way in the house. Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other's proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other's opinions. Indeed, as each has her own individuality, not to say eccentricity, pretty strongly developed, nothing is so easy as verbal retaliation, but somehow goodwill reigns among them to a considerable degree. The Cranford ladies have only an occasional little quarrel spirited out in a few peppery words and angry jerks of the head, just enough to prevent the even tenor of their lives from becoming too flat. Their dress is very independent of fashion, as they observe, what does it signify how we dress here at Cranford, where everybody knows us? And if they go from home their reason is equally cogent. What does it signify how we dress here, where nobody knows us? The materials of their clothes are, in general, good and plain, and most of them are nearly as scrupulous as Miss Tyler of cleanly memory, but I will answer for it the last Gijo, the last tight and scanty petticoat in wear in England, was seen in Cranford, and seen without a smile. I can testify to a magnificent family red silk umbrella under which a gentle little spinster, left alone of many brothers and sisters, used to paddle to church on rainy days. Have you any red silk umbrellas in London? We had a tradition of the first that had ever been seen in Cranford, and the little boys mobbed it and called it a stick in petticoats. It might have been the very red silk one I have described, held by a strong father over a troop of little ones. The poor little lady, the survivor of all, could scarcely carry it. Then there were rules and regulations for visiting and calls, and they were announced to any young people who might be staying in the town, with all the solemnity with which the old Manx laws were read twice a year on the tinwalled mount. Our friends have sent to inquire how you are after your journey to-night, my dear, fifteen miles in a gentleman's carriage. They will give you some rest to-morrow, but the next day I have no doubt they will call. So be it liberty after twelve, from twelve to three hour calling hours. Then after they had called, it is the third day I daresay your mamma has told you, my dear, never to let more than three days elapse between receiving a call and returning it, and also that you are never to stay longer than a quarter of an hour. But am I to look at my watch? How am I to find out when a quarter of an hour has passed? You must keep thinking about the time, my dear, and not to allow yourself to forget it in conversation. As everybody had this rule in their minds, whether they received or paid a call, of course no absorbing subject was ever spoken about. We kept ourselves to short sentences of small talk, and were punctual to our time. I imagine that a few of the gentle folks of Cranford were poor and had some difficulty in making both ends meet, but they were like the Spartans, and concealed their smart under a smiling face. We none of us spoke of money, because that subject savored of commerce and trade, and though some might be poor, we were all aristocratic. The Cranfordians had that kindly aspirated core which made them overlook all deficiencies in success when some among them tried to conceal their poverty. When Mrs. Forster, for instance, gave a party in her baby-house of a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a request that she might get the tea-tree out from underneath, everyone took this novel proceeding as the most natural thing in the world, and talked on about household forms and ceremonies, as if we all believed that our hostess had a regular servants-hall, second table, with housekeeper and steward, instead of the one little charity school maiden whose short, ruddy arms could never have been strong enough to carry the tray upstairs if she had not been assisted in private by her mistress, who now sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge cakes. There were one or two consequences arriving from this general but unacknowledged poverty, and this very much acknowledged gentility which were not amiss, and which might be introduced into many circles of society to their great improvement. For instance, the inhabitants of Cranford kept early hours, and clattered home in their patents, under the guidance of a lantern-bearer, about nine o'clock at night, and the whole town was a bed and a sleep by half-past ten. Moreover, it was considered vulgar, a tremendous word in Cranford, to give anything expensive in the way of eatable or drinkable at the evening entertainments. Way for bread and butter and sponge biscuits were all that the honourable Mrs. Jameson gave, and she was sister-in-law to the late Earl of Glenmire, although she did practice such elegant economy. Elegant economy! How naturally one falls back into the phraseology of Cranford! There, economy was always elegant, and money-spending always vulgar and ostentatious, a sort of sour grapism which made us very peaceful and satisfied. I never shall forget the dismay felt when a certain Captain Brown came to live at Cranford, and openly spoke about his being poor, not in a whisper to an intimate friend, the doors and windows being previously closed, but in the public street, in a loud military voice, alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a particular house. The ladies of Cranford were already rather moaning over the invasion of their territories by a man and a gentleman. He was a half-pay captain, and had obtained some situation on a neighbouring railroad, which had been vehemently petitioned against by the little town, and if, in addition to his masculine gender and his connection with the obnoxious railroad, he was so brazen as to talk of being poor, why then, indeed, he must be sent to Coventry. Death was as true and as common as poverty, yet people never spoke about that, loud in the streets. It was a word not to be mentioned to ears polite. We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we are associated on terms of visiting equally could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything that they wished. If we walked to or from a party it was because the night was so fine, or the air so refreshing, not because sedan chairs were expensive. If we wore prints instead of summer silks it was because we preferred a washing material, and so on, till we blinded ourselves to the vulgar fact that we were all of us, people of very moderate means. Of course then we did not know what to make of a man who could speak of poverty as if it were not a disgrace. Yet somehow Captain Brown made himself respected in Cranford, and was called upon in spite of all resolutions to the contrary. I was surprised to hear his opinions quoted as authority at a visit which I paid to Cranford about a year after he had settled in the town. My own friends had been among the bitterest opponents of any proposal to visit the Captain and his daughters only twelve months before, and now he was even admitted in the tabooed hours before twelve. True it was to discover the cause of a smoking chimney before the fire was lighted, but still Captain Brown walked upstairs, nothing daunted, spoken a voice too large for the room, and joked quite in the way of a tame man about the house. He had been blind to all the small slights and omissions of trivial ceremonies with which he had been received. He had been friendly, though the Cranford ladies had been cool. He had answered small sarcastic compliments in good faith, and with his manly frankness had overpowered all the shrinking which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor. And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense and his facility in devising expedience to overcome domestic dilemmas had gained him an extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself went on in his course as unaware of his popularity as he had been of the reverse, and I am sure he was startled one day when he found his advice so highly esteemed as to make some counsel which he had given in jest to be taken in sober, serious earnest. It was on this subject. An old lady had an Alderney cow which she looked upon as a daughter. You could not pay the short quarter of an hour call without being told of the wonderful milk or wonderful intelligence of this animal. The whole town knew and kindly regarded Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney. Therefore, great was the sympathy and regret when, in an unguarded moment, the poor cow tumbled into a lime pit. She moaned so loudly that she was soon heard and rescued, but meanwhile the poor beast had lost most of her hair and came out looking naked, cold and miserable in a bare skin. Everybody pityed the animal, though a few could not restrain their smiles at her droll appearance. Miss Betsy Barker absolutely cried with sorrow in dismay, and it was such she thought of trying a bath of oil. This remedy, perhaps, was recommended by some one of the number whose advice she asked, if it ever was made, was knocked on the head by Captain Brown's decided, get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers, ma'am, if you wish to keep her alive. But my advice is, kill the poor creature at once. Miss Betsy Barker dried her eyes and thanked the Captain heartily. She set to work, and by and by all the town turned out to see the Alderney meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark grey flannel. I have watched her myself many a time. Do you ever see cows dressed in grey flannel in London? Captain Brown had taken a small house on the outskirts of town, where he lived with his two daughters. He must have been upwards of sixty at the time of the first visit I paid to Cranford after I had left it as a residence. But he had a wiry, well-trained, elastic figure, a stiff military throwback of his head and a springing step which made him appear much younger than he was. His eldest daughter looked almost as old as himself, and betrayed the fact that his real was more than his apparent age. Miss Brown must have been forty. She had a sickly, pained, care-worn expression on her face, and looked as if the gaiety of youth had faded long out of sight. Even when young she must have been plain and hard-featured. Miss Jesse Brown was ten years younger than her sister and twenty shades prettier. Her face was round and dimpled. Miss Jenkins once said, in a passion against Captain Brown, the cause of which I will tell you presently, that she thought it was time for Miss Jesse to leave off her dimples and not always be trying to look like a child. It was true there was something childlike in her face, and there will be, I think, till she dies, though she should live to a hundred. Her eyes were large, blue, wondering eyes, looking straight at you. Her nose was unformed and snubbed. Her lips were red and dewy. She wore her hair, too, in little rows of curls, which heightened this appearance. I do not know whether she was pretty or not, but I liked her face, and so did everybody, and I do not think she could help her dimples. She had something of her father's jauntiness of gait and manner, and any female observer might detect a slight difference in the attire of the two sisters, that of Miss Jesse being about two pounds per annum more expensive than Miss Brown's. Two pounds was a large sum in Captain Brown's annual disbursements. Such was the impression made upon me by the Brown family when I first saw them all together in Cranford Church. The captain I had met before, on the occasion of the smoky chimney, which he had cured by some simple alteration in the flu. In Church he held his double eyeglass to his eye during the morning hymn, and then lifted up his head erect and sang out loud joyfully. He made the responses louder than the clerk, an old man with a piping, feeble voice who I think felt aggrieved at the captain's sonorous base, and quivered higher and higher in consequence. On coming out of Church the brisk captain paid the most gallant attention to his two daughters. He nodded and smiled to his acquaintances, but he shook hands with none until he had helped Miss Brown to unfurl her umbrella, had relieved her of her prayer-book, and had waited patiently till she, with trembling, nervous hands, had taken up her gown to walk through the wet roads. I wonder what the Cranford ladies did with Captain Brown at their parties. We had often rejoiced in former days that there was no gentleman to be attended to, and to find conversation for at the card parties. We had congratulated ourselves on the snugness of the evenings, and in our love for gentility and a taste of mankind we had almost persuaded ourselves that to be a man was to be vulgar, so that when I found my friend and hostess, Miss Jenkins, was going to have a party in my honour, and that the captain and Miss Browns were invited, I wondered much what would be the course of the evening. Card tables with green bay's tops were set out by daylight, just as usual. It was the third week in November, so the evenings closed in about four. Candles and clean packs of cards were arranged on each table. The fire was made up, the neat maid- servant had received her last directions, and there we stood, dressed in our best, each with a candle-lighter in our hands, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knot came. Parties in Cranford were solemn festivities, making the ladies feel gravely elated as they sat down together in their best dresses. As soon as the three had arrived we sat down to preference, I being the unlucky fourth. The next four comers were put down immediately to another table, and presently the tea trays, which I had seen set out in the storeroom as I passed in the morning, were placed each on the middle of a card-table. The china was delicate eggshell, the old-fashioned silver glittered with polishing, but the eatables were of the slightest description. While the trays were yet on the tables, the captain and the Miss Browns came in, and I could see that, somehow or other, the captain was a favourite with all the ladies present. Ruffled brows were smooth, sharp voices lowered at his approach. Miss Brown looked ill, and depressed almost aglume. Miss Jessie smiled as usual, and seemed nearly as popular as her father. He immediately and quietly assumed the man's place in the room, attended to everyone's wants, lessened the pretty maid's servant's labour by waiting on empty cups and bread and butterless ladies, and yet did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course, for the strong to attend the week, that he was a true man throughout. He played for three penny-points with as grave an interest as if they had been pounds, and yet in all his attention to strangers he had an eye on his suffering daughter, for suffering I was sure she was, though to many eyes she might only appear to be irritable. Miss Jessie could not play cards, but she talked to the sitters out, who before her coming had been rather inclined to be cross. She sang, too, to an old cracked piano, which I think had been a spinet in its youth. Miss Jessie sang, jock of Hazeldine, a little out of tune, but we were none of us musical, though Miss Jenkins beat time, out of time, by way of appearing to be so. It was very good of Miss Jenkins to do this, for I had seen that, a little before, she had been a good deal annoyed by Miss Jessie Brown's unguarded admission, apropos of Shetland Wool, that she had an uncle, her mother's brother, who was a shopkeeper in Edinburgh. Miss Jenkins tried to drown this confession by a terrible cough, for the honourable Mrs. Jameson was sitting at a card-table nearest Miss Jessie, and what would she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with a shopkeeper's niece? But Miss Jessie Brown, who had no tact as we all agree the next morning, would repeat the information, and assure Miss Poll that she could easily get her the identical Shetland Wool required, through my uncle, who has the best assortment of Shetland goods of any one in Edinburgh. It was to take the taste of this out of our mouths, and the sound of this out of our ears, that Miss Jenkins proposed music, so I say again it was very good of her to beat time to the song. When the trays reappeared with biscuits and wine, punctually at a quarter to nine, there was conversation, comparing of cards and talking over tricks, but by and by Captain Brown sported a bit of literature. Have you seen any numbers of the Pickwick papers, said he? They were then publishing in parts. Capital thing! Now Miss Jenkins was daughter of a deceased rector of Cranford, and on the strength of a number of manuscript sermons and a pretty good library of divinity considered herself literary, and looked upon any conversation about books as a challenge to her. So she answered and said, Yes, she had seen them, indeed she might say she had read them. And what do you think of them? exclaimed Captain Brown. Aren't they famously good? So urged Miss Jenkins could not but speak. I must say I don't think they are by any means equal to Dr. Johnson. Still, perhaps the author is young. Let him persevere, and who knows what he may become if he will take the good doctor for his model. This was evidently too much for Captain Brown to take placidly, and I saw the words on the tip of his tongue before Miss Jenkins had finished her sentence. It is quite a different sort of thing, my dear madam, he began. I am quite aware of that, return she, and I make allowances, Captain Brown. Just allow me to read you a scene out of this month's number, pleaded he. I had it only this morning, and I don't think the company can have read it yet. As you please, said she, settling herself with an error resignation. He read the account of the soiree which Sam Weller gave at Bath. Some of us laughed heartily. I did not dare, as I was staying in the house. Miss Jenkins sat in patient gravity. When it was ended, she turned to me and said with mild dignity, Fetch me, Rastlas, my dear, out of the book-room. When I had brought it to her, she turned to Captain Brown. Now allow me to read you a scene, and then the present company can judge between your favourite, Mr. Bos, and Dr. Johnson. She read one of the conversations between Rastlas and Imlak, in a high-pitched, majestic voice, and when she had ended she said, I imagine I am now justified in my preference of Dr. Johnson as a writer of fiction. The Captain screwed his lips up and drummed on the table, but he did not speak. She thought she would give him a finishing blow or two. I consider it vulgar and below the dignity of literature to publish in numbers. How was the rambler published, ma'am? asked Captain Brown in a low voice, which I think Miss Jenkins could not have heard. Mr. Johnson's style is a model for young beginners. My father recommended it to me when I began to write letters. I have formed my own style upon it. I recommend it to your favourite. I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such pompous writing, said Captain Brown. Miss Jenkins felt this as a personal affront, in a way of which the Captain had not dreamed. At pistolary writing she and her friends considered as her forte. Many a copy of many a letter I have seen written and corrected on the slate, before she seized the half-hour just previous to post-time to assure her friends of this or that, and Dr. Johnson was, as she said, her model in these compositions. She drew herself up with dignity and only replied to Captain Brown's last remark by saying, with marked emphasis on every syllable, I prefer Dr. Johnson to Mr. Baz. It is said, I won't vouch for the fact, that Captain Brown was her to say, Saravoche, damn Dr. Johnson. If he did he was penitent afterwards, as he showed by going to stand near Miss Jenkins's arm-chair and endeavouring to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing subject. But she was inexorable. The next day she made the remark I have mentioned about Miss Jessie's dimples. CHAPTER II The Captain. It was impossible to live a month at Cranford and not know the daily habits of each resident, and long before my visit ended I knew much concerning the whole Brown trio. There was nothing new to be discovered respecting their poverty, for they had spoken simply and openly about that from the very first. They made no mystery of the necessity for their being economical. All that remained to be discovered was the Captain's infinite kindness of heart, and the various modes in which unconsciously to himself he manifested it. Some little anecdotes were talked about for some time after they occurred. As we did not read much, and as all the ladies were pretty well suited with servants, there was a dearth of subjects for conversation. We therefore discussed the circumstance of the Captain taking a poor old woman's dinner out of her hands one very slippery Sunday. He had met her returning from the bake-house as he came from church, and noticed her precarious footing, and with the grave dignity with which he did everything he relieved her of her burden, and steered along the street by her side, carrying her baked mutton and potatoes safely home. This was thought very eccentric, and it was rather expected that he would pay a round of calls on the Monday morning to explain and apologize to the Cranford sense of propriety, but he did no such thing, and then it was decided that he was ashamed and was keeping out of sight. In a kindly pity for him we began to say, after all, the Sunday morning's occurrence showed great goodness of heart, and it was resolved that he should be comforted on his next appearance amongst us, but lo, he came down upon us, untouched by any sense of shame, speaking loud and bass as ever, his head thrown back, his wig as jaunty and well curled as usual, and we were obliged to conclude he had forgotten all about Sunday. Miss Pole and Miss Jessie Brown had set up a kind of intimacy on the strength of the Shetland Wool, and the new knitting stitches, so it happened that when I went to visit Miss Pole I saw more of the Browns than I had done while staying with Miss Jenkins, who had never got over what she called Captain Brown's disparaging remarks upon Dr. Johnson as a writer of light and agreeable fiction. I found that Miss Brown was seriously ill of some lingering incurable complaint, the pain occasioned by which gave the uneasy expression to her face that I had taken for unmitigated crossness. Cross, too, she was at times when the nervous irritability occasioned by her disease became past endurance. Miss Jessie bore with her at these times even more patiently than she did with the bitter self-up braiding by which they were invariably succeeded. Miss Brown used to accuse herself not merely of hasty and irritable temper, but also of being the cause why her father and sister were obliged to pinch in order to allow her the small luxuries which weren't necessaries in her condition. She would so fain have made sacrifices for them, and have lightened their cares, that the original generosity of her disposition added a serbity to her temper. All this was born by Miss Jessie and her father with more than placidity, with absolute tenderness. I forgave Miss Jessie her singing out of tune and her juvenality of dress when I saw her at home. I came to perceive that Captain Brown's dark, brutish wig and padded coat, alas, too often threadbare, were remnants of the military smartness of his youth, which he now wore unconsciously. He was a man of infinite resources gained in his barric experience. As he confessed, no one could black his boots to please him except himself, but indeed he was not above saving the little maid-servants' labours in every way, knowing, most likely, that his daughter's illness made the place a hard one. He endeavored to make peace with Miss Jenkins soon after the memorable dispute I have named, by a present of a wooden fire-shell, his own making, having heard her say how much the grading of an iron one annoyed her. She received the present with cool gratitude and thanked him formally. When he was gone she bad me put it away in the lumber-room, feeling probably that no present from a man who preferred Mr. Boz, to Dr. Johnson, could be less jarring than an iron fire-shell. Such was the state of things when I left Cranford and went to Drumble. I had, however, several correspondents who kept me, O'Faye, as to the proceedings of the dear little town. There was Miss Pole, who was becoming as much absorbed in crochet as she had been once in knitting, and the burden of whose letter was something like, but don't you forget the white worsted at flints of the old song, for at the end of every sentence of news came a fresh direction as to some crochet-commission I was to execute for her. Miss Matilda Jenkins, who did not mind being called Miss Maddie when Miss Jenkins was not by, wrote nice, kind, rambling letters, now and then venturing into an opinion of her own, but suddenly pulling herself up, and either begging me not to name what she had said, as Deborah thought differently, and she knew, or else putting in a post-grip to the effect that, since writing the above, she had been talking over the subject with Deborah, and was quite convinced that, etc., here probably followed a recitation of every opinion she had given in the letter. Then came Miss Jenkins, Deborah, as she liked Miss Maddie to call her, her father having once said that the Hebrew name ought to be so pronounced. I secretly think she took the Hebrew prophetess for a modeling character, and indeed she was not unlike the stern prophetess in some ways, making allowance, of course, for modern customs and differences in dress. Miss Jenkins wore a cravat, and a little bonnet like a jockey cap, and altogether had the appearance of a strong-minded woman, although she would have despised the modern idea of woman being equal to men. Equal indeed she knew they were superior. But to return to her letters, everything in them was stately and grand like herself. I have been looking them over, dear Miss Jenkins, how I honoured her, and will give an extract more especially because it relates to our friend Captain Brown. The honourable Mrs. Jameson has only just quitted me, and in the course of conversation she communicated to me the intelligence that she had yesterday received a call from her revered husband's quantum friend, Lord Mulliver. You will not easily conjecture what brought his lordship within the precincts of our little town. It was to see, Captain Brown, with whom it appears his lordship was acquainted in the plumed wars, and who had the privilege of averting destruction from his lordship's head when some great peril was impending over it, off the misnomered cape of good hope. You know, our friend, the honourable Mrs. Jameson's deficiency in the spirit of innocent curiosity, and you will therefore not be so much surprised when I tell you she was quite unable to disclose to me the exact nature of the peril in question. I was anxious I confessed to ascertain in what matter Captain Brown, with his limited establishment, could receive so distinguished a guest, and I discovered that his lordship retired to rest and let us hope to refreshing slumbers at the Angel Hotel, but shared the Brunonian meals during the two days that he honoured Cranford with his august presence. Mrs. Johnson, our civil butcher's wife, informs me that Miss Jesse purchased a leg of lamb, but besides this I can hear of no preparation whatever to give a suitable reception to so distinguished a visitor. Perhaps they entertained him with the feast of reason in the flow of soul, and to us who are acquainted with Captain Brown's sad want of relish for the pure wells of English undefiled. It may be matter for congratulation that he has had the opportunity of improving his taste by holding converse with an elegant and refined member of the British aristocracy, but from some mundane failings who is altogether free? Miss Pull and Miss Maddie wrote to me by the same post. Such a piece of news as Lord Mulliver's visit was not to be lost on the Cranford letter-writers. They made the most of it. Miss Maddie humbly apologised for writing at the same time as her sister, who was so much more capable than she to describe the honour done to Cranford. But in spite of a little bad spelling, Miss Maddie's account gave me the best idea of the commotion occasioned by his lordship's visit. After it had occurred, for except the people at the angel, the Browns, Mrs. Jameson, and a little lad his lordship had sworn at for driving a dirty hoop against the aristocratic legs, I could not hear of any one with whom his lordship had held a conversation. My next visit to Cranford was in the summer. There had been neither births, deaths, nor marriages since I was there last. Everybody lived in the same house, and wore pretty nearly the same well-preserved, old-fashioned clothes. The greatest event was that Miss Jenkins had purchased a new carpet for the drawing-room. Oh, the busy work Miss Maddie and I had in chasing the sunbeams as they fell in an afternoon, right down on this carpet through the blindless window. We spread newspapers over the places and sat down to our book or our work, and low in a quarter of an hour the sun had moved and was blazing away on a fresh spot, and down we went on our knees to alter the position of the newspapers. We were very busy, too, one whole morning, before Miss Jenkins gave her party, in following her directions, and in cutting out and stitching together pieces of newspaper so as to form little paths to every chair set for the expected visitors, lest their shoes might dirty or defile the purity of the carpet. Do you make paper paths for ever guessed to walk upon in London? Captain Brown and Miss Jenkins were not very cordial to each other. The literary dispute, of which I had seen the beginning, was raw, the slightest touch on which made them wince. It was the only difference of opinion they had ever had, but that difference was enough. Miss Jenkins could not refrain from talking at Captain Brown, and though he did not reply, he drummed with his fingers which actions she felt and resented as very disparaging to Dr. Johnson. He was rather ostentatious in his preference of the writings of Mr. Bos, would walk through the streets so absorbed in them that he all but ran up against Miss Jenkins, and though his apologies were earnest and sincere, and though he did not, in fact, do more than startle her and himself, she owned to me that she had rather he had knocked her down, if he had only been reading a higher style of literature. The poor brave captain, he looked older and more careworn, and his clothes were very threadbare, but he seemed as bright and cheerful as ever unless he was asked about his daughter's health. She suffers a great deal, and she must suffer more. We do what we can to alleviate her pain. God's will be done. He took off his hat at these last words. I found, from Miss Maddie, that everything had been done, in fact. A medical man of high repute in that country neighborhood had been sent for, and every injunction he had given was attended to, regardless of expense. Miss Maddie was sure they denied themselves many things in order to make the invalid comfortable, but they never spoke about it, and as for Miss Jessie, I really think she's an angel, said poor Miss Maddie, quite overcome. To see her way of bearing with Miss Brown's crossness and the bright face she puts on after she's been sitting up a whole night and scolded above half of it is quite beautiful. Yet she looks as neat and ready to welcome the captain at breakfast time as if she had been asleep in the queen's bed all night. My dear, you could never laugh at her prim little curls or her pink bows again if you saw her as I have done. I could only feel very penitent and greet Miss Jessie with double respect when I met her next. She looked faded and pinched, and her lips began to quiver, as if she was very weak when she spoke of her sister. But she brightened and sent back the tears that were glittering her pretty eyes, as she said, but to be sure what a town Cranford is for kindness. I don't suppose anyone has a better dinner than usual cooked, but the best part of it all comes in a little covered basin for my sister. The poor people will leave their earliest vegetables at our door for her. They speak short and gruff, as if they were ashamed of it, but I am sure it often goes to my heart to see their thoughtfulness. The tears now came back and overflowed, but after a minute or two she began to scold herself, and ended by going away the same cheerful Miss Jessie as ever. But why does not this Lord Mulliver do something for the man who saved his life, said I? Why, you see, unless Captain Brown has some reason for it he never speaks about being poor, and he walked along by his lordship looking as happy and cheerful as a prince, and as they never called attention to their dinner by apologies, and as Miss Brown was better that day, and all seemed bright, I daresay his lordship never knew how much care there was in the background. He did send game in the winter pretty often, but he has now gone abroad. I had often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities in Cranford. The rose-leaves were gathered ere they fell to make into a potpourri for someone who had no garden. The little bunches of lavender flowers sent to strew the drawers of some town-dweller, or to burn in the chamber of some invalid. Things that many would despise, and actions which it seemed scarcely worthwhile to perform, were all attended to in Cranford. Miss Jenkins stuck an apple full of cloves to be heated and smell pleasantly in Miss Brown's room, and as she put in each clove she uttered a Johnsonian sentence. Indeed, she could never think of the Browns without talking Johnson, and as they were seldom absent from her thoughts just then, I heard many a rolling three-piled sentence. Captain Brown called one day to thank Miss Jenkins for many little kindnesses which I did not know until then that she had rendered. He had suddenly become like an old man, his deep bass voice had a quivering in it, his eyes looked dim, and the lines on his face were deep. He did not, could not, speak cheerfully of his daughter's state, but he talked with manly, pious resignation, and not much. Twice over, he said, what Jesse has been to us God only knows, and after the second time he got up hastily, shook hands all around without speaking, and left the room. That afternoon we perceived little groups in the street, all listening with faces aghast to some tale or other. Miss Jenkins wondered what could be the matter for some time before she took the undignified step of sending Jenny out to inquire. Jenny came back with a white face of terror. Oh, ma'am, oh, Miss Jenkins, ma'am, Captain Brown is killed by the nasty cruel railroads. And she burst into tears. She, along with many others, had experienced the poor Captain's kindness. How, where, where, good God, Jenny, don't waste time in crying but tell us something. Miss Maddie rushed out into the street at once and collared the man who was telling the tale. Come in, come to my sister at once, Miss Jenkins, the rector's daughter. Oh, ma'am, ma'am, say it is not true, she cried as she brought the affrighted Carter, sleeking down his hair into the drawing-room, where he stood with his wet boots on the new carpet, and no one regarded it. Please, ma'am, it is true, I see it myself. And he shuddered at the recollection. The Captain was a reading some new book he was deep in, awaiting for the train down, and there was a little lass as wanted to come to its mammy, and gave its sister the slip and came toddling across the line, and he looked up, sudden, at the sound of the train coming, and see'd the child, and he darted on the line and cutched it up, and his foot slipped, and the train came over him in no time. Oh, Lord, Lord, ma'am, it's quite true, and they've come over to tell his daughters. The child's safe, though, with only a bang on its shoulder as he threw it to its mammy. Poor Captain would be glad of that, ma'am, wouldn't he? God bless him. The great rough Carter puckered up his manly face, and turned away to hide his tears. She looked very ill, as if she were going to faint, and signed to me to open the window. Matilda, bring me my bonnet. I must go to those girls. God pardon me if I have ever spoken contemptuously to the Captain. Miss Jenkins arrayed herself to go out, telling Miss Matilda to give the man a glass of wine. While she was away, Miss Maddie and I huddled over the fire, talking in a low and awestruck voice. I know we cried quietly all the time. Miss Jenkins came home in a silent mood, and we darest not ask her many questions. She told us that Miss Jessie had fainted, and that she and Miss Poll had had some difficulty in bringing her round, but that as soon as she recovered she begged one of them to go and sit with her sister. Mr. Hodgson says she cannot live many days, and she shall be spared this shock, said Miss Jessie, shivering with feelings which she dared not give away. But how can you manage, my dear, asked Miss Jenkins? You cannot bear up. She must see your tears. God will help me. I will not give way. She was asleep when the news came. She may be asleep yet. She would be so utterly miserable, not merely at my father's death, but to think of what would become of me. She is so good to me. She looked up earnestly in their faces with her soft, true eyes, and Miss Poll told Miss Jenkins afterwards she could hardly bear it, knowing, as she did, how Miss Brown treated her sister. However, it was settled according to Miss Jessie's wish. Miss Brown was to be told her father had been summoned to take a short journey on railway business. They had managed it in some way. Miss Jenkins could not exactly say how. Miss Poll was to stop with Miss Jessie. Mrs. Jamison had sent to inquire, and this was all we heard that night, and a sorrowful night it was. The next day a full account of the fatal accident was in the county paper which Miss Jenkins took in. Her eyes were very weak, she said, and she asked me to read it. When I came to the gallant gentleman was deeply engaged in the perusal of a number of pickwick which he had just received, Miss Jenkins shook her head long and solemnly and then sighed out, poor, dear, infatuated man. The corpse was to be taken from the station to the parish church, and there to be interred. Miss Jessie had set her heart on following it to the grave, and no dissuasive could alter her resolve. Her restraint upon herself made her almost obstinate. She resisted all Miss Poll's and treaties and Miss Jenkins's advice. At last Miss Jenkins gave up the point, and after a silence which I feared portended some deep displeasure against Miss Jessie, Miss Jenkins said she should accompany the latter to the funeral. It is not fit for you to go alone. It would be against both propriety and humanity were I to allow it. Miss Jessie seemed as if she did not half like this arrangement, but her obstinacy, if she had any, had been exhausted in her determination to go to the internment. She longed, poor thing, I have no doubt, to cry alone over the grave of the dear father to whom she had been all in all, and to give way for one little half-hour uninterrupted by sympathy and unobserved by friendship. But it was not to be. That afternoon Miss Jenkins sent out for a yard of black crepe, and employed herself busily in trimming the little black silk bonnet I have spoken about. When it was finished she put it on and looked at us for approbation, admiration, she despised. I was full of sorrow, but by one of those whimsical thoughts which come unbidden in our heads in times of deepest grief, I no sooner saw the bonnet than I was reminded of a helmet, and in that hybrid bonnet, half-helmet, half-jockey-cap, did Miss Jenkins attend Captain Brown's funeral, and I believe supported Miss Jessie with a tender, indulgent firmness which was invaluable, allowing her to weep her passionate fill before they left. Miss Pohl, Miss Maddie and I, meanwhile, attended to Miss Brown, and hard work we found it to relieve her quarrelous and never-ending complaints. But if we were so weary and dispirited, what must Miss Jessie have been? Yet she came back almost as calm as if she had gained a new strength. She put off her morning dress and came in, looking pale and gentle, thanking us each with the soft, long pressure of the hand. She could even smile, a faint, sweet, wintry smile, as if to reassure us of her power to endure, but her look made our eyes feel suddenly with tears, more than if she had cried outright. It was settled that Miss Pohl was to remain with her all the watching, live-long night, and that Miss Maddie and I were to return in the morning to relieve them, and give Miss Jessie the opportunity for a few hours of sleep. But when the morning came, Miss Jenkins appeared at the breakfast table, equipped in her helmet bonnet, and ordered Miss Maddie to stay at home, as she meant to go and help to nurse. She was evidently in a state of great friendly excitement, which she showed by eating her breakfast standing and scolding the household all round. No nursing, no energetic, strong-minded woman could help Miss Brown now. There was in that room as we entered, which was stronger than us all, and made us shrink into solemn, awestruck helplessness. Miss Brown was dying. We hardly knew her voice. It was so devoid of the complaining tone we had always associated with it. Miss Jessie told me afterwards that it and her face, too, were just what they had been formerly, when her mother's death left her the young, anxious head of the family of whom only Miss Jessie survived. She was conscious of her sister's presence, though not, I think, of ours. We stood a little behind the curtain. Miss Jessie knelt with her face near her sisters in order to catch the last soft, awful whispers. Oh, Jessie, Jessie, how selfish I have been! God forgive me for letting you sacrifice yourself for me as you did. I have so loved you, and yet I have thought only of myself. God forgive me. Hush, love, hush, said Miss Jessie, sobbing. And my father, my dear, dear father, I will not complain now if God will give me strength to be patient. But oh, Jessie, tell my father how I longed and yearned to see him at last, and to ask his forgiveness. He can never know now how I loved him. Oh, if I might but tell him before I die, what a life of sorrow his has been, and I have done so little to cheer him. A light came into Miss Jessie's face. Would it comfort you, dearest, to think that he does know? Would it comfort you, love, to know that his cares, his sorrows? Her voice quivered, but she steadied it into calmness. Mary, he has gone before you to the place where the weary are at rest. She knows now how you loved him. A strange look, which was not distress, came over Miss Brown's face. She did not speak for some time, but then we saw her lips form the words, rather than heard the sound. Father, mother, Henry, Archie. Then, as if it were a new idea throwing a filmy shadow over her darkened mind. But you will be alone, Jessie. Miss Jessie had been feeling this all during the silence, I think, for the tears rolled down her cheeks like rain at these words, and she could not answer at first. Then she put her hands together tight and lifted them up and said, but not to us, though he slay me, yet I will trust in him. In a few moments more Miss Brown lay calm and still, never to sorrow or murmur at more. After this second funeral Miss Jenkins insisted that Miss Jessie should come to stay with her rather than go back to the desolate house, which in fact we were learning from Miss Jessie must now be given up, as she had not wherewithal to maintain it. She had something above twenty pounds a year, besides the interest of the money for which the furniture would sell. But she could not live upon that, and so we talked over her qualifications for earning money. I can so neatly, said she, and I like nursing. I think, too, I could manage a house, if any one would try me as a housekeeper, or I would go into a shop as a saleswoman if they would have patience with me at first. Miss Jenkins declared in an angry voice that she should do no such thing, and talked to herself about some people having no idea of their rank as a captain's daughter. Nearly an hour afterwards, when she brought Miss Jessie up a basin of delicately made arrow-root, and stood over her like a dragoon until the last spoonful was finished, then she disappeared. Miss Jessie began to tell me some more of the plans was had suggested themselves to her, and insensibly fell into talking of the days that were past and gone, and interested me so much, I neither knew nor heeded how time passed. We were both startled when Miss Jenkins reappeared and caught us crying. I was afraid lest she would be displeased, as she often said that crying hindered digestion, and I knew she wanted Miss Jessie to get strong. But instead she looked queer and excited, and fidgeted round us without saying anything. At last she spoke. I have been so much startled. No, I've not been at all startled. Don't mind me, my dear Miss Jessie. I've been very much surprised. In fact, I've had a collar whom he knew once. My dear Miss Jessie—Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed scarlet and looked eagerly at Miss Jenkins. A gentleman, my dear, who wants to know if you would see him, is it—it is not—stammered out Miss Jessie, and got no farther. This is his card, said Miss Jenkins, giving it to Miss Jessie, and while her head was bent over it, Miss Jenkins went through a series of winks and odd faces to me, and formed her lips into a long sentence, of which, of course, I could not understand a word. May he come up? asked Miss Jenkins at last. Oh, yes, certainly, said Miss Jessie, as much as to say, this is your house, you may show any visitor where you like. She took up some knitting of Miss Maddie's, and began to be very busy, though I could see how she trembled all over. Miss Jenkins rang the bell, and told the servant who answered it to show Major Gordon upstairs, and presently in walked a tall, frank-looking man of forty or upwards. He shook hands with Miss Jessie, but he could not see her eyes. She kept them so fixed on the ground. Miss Jenkins asked me if I would come and help her tie up the preserves in the storeroom, and though Miss Jessie plucked at my gown, and even looked up at me with begging eye, I darest not refuse to go where Miss Jenkins asked. Instead of tying up preserves in the storeroom, however, we went to talk in the dining room. And there Miss Jenkins told me what Major Gordon had told her, how he had served in the same regiment with Captain Brown, and had become acquainted with Miss Jessie, then a sweet-looking, blooming girl of eighteen, how the acquaintance had grown into love on his part, though it had been some years before he had spoken, how, on becoming possessed through the will of an uncle of a good estate in Scotland, he had offered and had been refused, though with so much agitation and evident distress that he was sure she was not indifferent to him, and how he had discovered that the obstacle was the fell disease which was, even then, too surely threatening her sister. She had mentioned that the surgeons foretold intense suffering to nurse her poor Mary, or cheer and comfort her father during the time of illness. They had long discussions, and on her refusal to pledge herself to him as his wife, when all should be over, he had grown angry and broken off entirely and gone abroad, believing that she was a cold-hearted person whom he would do well to forget. He had been traveling in the East, and was on his return home when, at Rome, he saw the account of Captain Brown's death in Gallignani. Just then, Miss Maddie, who had been out all the morning, and who had only lately returned to the house, burst in with a face of dismay and outraged propriety. Oh, goodness me! she said. Deborah, there's a gentleman sitting in the drawing-room with his arm around Miss Jessie's waist. Miss Maddie's eyes looked large with terror. Miss Jenkins snubbed her down in an instant. The most proper place in the world for her is armed to be. Go away, Matilda, and mind your own business. This from her sister, who had hitherto been a model of feminine decorum, was a blow for poor Miss Maddie, and with a double shock she left the room. The last time I ever saw poor Miss Jenkins was many years after this. Mrs. Gordon had kept up a warm and affectionate intercourse with all at Cranford. Miss Jenkins, Miss Maddie, and Miss Pohl had all been to visit her, and returned with wonderful accounts of her house, her husband, her dress, and her clothes. For, with happiness, something of her early bloom returned. She had been a year or two younger than we had taken her for. Her eyes were always lovely, and as Mrs. Gordon, her dimples were not out of place. At the time to which I have referred, when I last saw Miss Jenkins, that lady was old and feeble and had lost something of her strong mind. Little Flora Gordon was staying with the Mrs. Jenkins, and when I came in she was reading aloud to Miss Jenkins who lay feeble and changed on the sofa. Flora put down the rambler when I came in. Ah! said Miss Jenkins, you find me changed, my dear. If I can't see as I used to do, if Flora were not here to read to me, I hardly know how I should get through the day. Did you ever read the rambler? It's a wonderful book, wonderful, and the most improving reading for Flora, which I daresay it would have been if she could have read half the words without spelling and could have understood the meaning of a third, better than that strange old book with the queer name Poor Captain Brown was killed for reading. That book by Mr. Bos, you know, old pause when I was a girl, but that's a long time ago. I acted Lucy in old pause. She babbled on long enough for Flora to get a good long spell at the Christmas Carol, which Miss Maddie had left on the table. CHAPTER III. A Love Affair of Long Go. I thought that probably my connection with Cranford would cease after Miss Jenkins' death, at least that it would have to be kept up by correspondence which bears much the same relation to personal intercourse that the books of dried plants I sometimes see, Hortus Sicus, I think they call the thing, due to the living and fresh flowers in the lines and meadows. I was pleasantly surprised therefore by receiving a letter from Miss Pole, who had always come in for a supplementary week after my annual visit to Miss Jenkins, proposing that I should go and stay with her, and then in a couple of days after my acceptance came a note from Miss Maddie, in which, in a rather circuitous and very humble manner, she told me how much pleasure I should confer if I could spend a week or two with her, either before or after I had been at Miss's poles, for, she said, since my dear sister's death I am well aware I have no attractions to offer. It is only to the kindness of my friends that I can owe their company. Of course, I promised to come to dear Miss Maddie as soon as I had ended my visit to Miss Pole, and the day after my arrival at Cranford I went to see her, much wondering what the house would be like without Miss Jenkins, and rather dreading the changed aspect of things. Miss Maddie began to cry as soon as she saw me. She was evidently nervous from having anticipated my call. I comforted her as well I could, and found the best consolation I could give was the honest praise that came from my heart as I spoke of the deceased. Miss Maddie slowly shook her head over each virtue as it was named and attributed to her sister, and at last she could not restrain the tears which had long been silently flowing, but hid her face behind her handkerchief and sobbed aloud. Dear Miss Maddie, said I, taking her hand, for indeed I did not know in what way to tell her how sorry I was for her, left deserted in the world. She put down her handkerchief and said, My dear, I'd rather you did not call me Maddie. She did not like it, but I did many a things she did not like, I'm afraid, and now she's gone. If you please my love, will you call me Matilda? I promised faithfully, and began to practice the new name with Miss Pole that very day, and by degrees, Miss Matilda's feeling on the subject was known through Cranford, and we all tried to drop the more familiar name, but with so little success that by and by we gave up the attempt. My visit to Miss Pole was very quiet. Miss Jenkins had so long taken the lead in Cranford that now she was gone they hardly knew how to give a party. The honourable Mrs. Jameson, to whom Miss Jenkins herself had always yielded the post of honour, was fat and inert, and very much at the mercy of her old servants. If they chose that she should give a party they reminded her of the necessity for doing, if not she let it alone. There was all the more time for me to hear old world stories from Mrs. Pole while she sat knitting and I making my father's shirts. I always took a quantity of plain sewing to Cranford, for as we did not read much or walk much I founded a capital time to get through my work. One of Miss Pole's stories related to a shadow of a love affair that was dimly perceived or suspected long years before. Presently the time arrived when I was to remove to Miss Matilda's house. I found her timid and anxious about the arrangements for my comfort. Many a time, while I was unpacking, did she come backwards and forwards to stir the fire which burned all the worse for being so frequently poked. Have you drawers enough, dear? she asked. I don't know exactly how my sister used to arrange them. She had capital methods. I am sure she would have trained a servant in a week to make a better fire than this, and Fanny has been with me four months. The subject of servants was all standing grievance, and I could not wonder much of it, for if gentlemen were scarce and almost unheard of in the gentile society of Cranford, they or their counterparts, handsome young men, abounded in the lower classes. The pretty, neat serving-maids had their choice of desirable followers, and their mistresses without having the sort of mysterious dread of men and matrimony that Miss Matilda had might well feel a little anxious, lest the heads of their cumbly maids should be turned by the joiner, or the butcher, or the gardener, who were obliged by their colleagues to come to the house, and who, as ill luck would have it, were generally handsome and unmarried. Fanny's lovers, if she had any, and Miss Matilda suspected her of so many flirtations that, if she had not been very pretty, I should have doubted her having one, were a constant anxiety to her mistress. She was forbidden by the articles of her engagement to have followers, and though she had answered innocently enough, doubling up the hem of her apen if she spoke, please, ma'am, I never had more than one at a time. Miss Matty prohibited that one. But a vision of a man seemed to haunt the kitchen. Fanny assured me that it was all fancy, or else I should have said myself that I had seen a man's coattails whisk into the scullery once, when I went on an errand to the storeroom at night, and another evening, when our watches having stopped, I went to look at the clock. There was a very odd appearance, singularly like a young man squeezed up between the clock and the back of the open kitchen door, and I thought Fanny snatched up the candle very hastily, so as to throw the shadow on the clock-face, while she very positively told me the time, half an hour too early, as we found out afterwards by the church-clock. But I did not add to Miss Matty's anxieties by naming my suspicions, especially as Fanny said to me the next day, that it was such a queer kitchen for having odd shadows about it, she really was almost afraid to stay. For, you know, Miss, she added, I don't see a creature from six o'clock tea till Mrs. rings the bell for prayers at ten. However, it so fell out that Fanny had to leave, and Miss Matilda begged me to stay and settle her with the new maid, to which I consented, after I had heard from my father that he did not want me at home. The new servant was a rough, honest-looking country girl, who had only lived in a farm-place before, but I liked her looks when she came to be hired, and I promised Miss Matilda to put her in the ways of the house. The said ways were religiously such as Miss Matilda thought her sister would approve. Many a domestic rule and regulation had been a subject of plaintiff-whispered murmur to me during Miss Jenkins's life, but now that she was gone I do not think that even I, who was a favorite, dearest, have suggested an alteration. To give an instance we constantly adhered to the forms which we observed at mealtimes in, my father, the rector's house. Accordingly we always had wine and dessert, but the decanters were only filled when there was a party, and what remained was seldom touched, though we had two wine-glasses apiece every day after dinner, until the next festive occasion arrived, when the state of the remainder wine was examined into a family council. The dregs were often given to the poor, but occasionally, when a good deal had been left at the last party, five months ago it might be, it was added to some of a fresh bottle brought up from the cellar. I fancy poor Captain Brown did not much like wine, for I noticed he never finished his first glass, and most military men take several. Then, as to our dessert, Miss Jenkins used to gather currants and gooseberries for it herself, which I sometimes thought would have tasted better fresh from the trees, but then, as Miss Jenkins observed, there would have been nothing for dessert in the summer time. As it was, we felt very genteel with our two glasses apiece and a dish of gooseberries at the top, of currants and biscuits at the sides, and two decanters at the bottom. When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through. Miss Jenkins did not like to cut the fruit, for as she observed the juice all ran out nobody ever knew where. Sucking, I only think she used some more Wreck-and-Dite word, was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges, but then there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone through by little babies. And so, after dessert in orange season, Miss Jenkins and Miss Maddie used to rise up, possess themselves each of an orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms to indulge in sucking oranges. I had once or twice tried, on such occasions, to prevail on Miss Maddie to stay, and had succeeded in her sister's lifetime. I held up a screen and did not look, and, as she said, she tried not to make the noise very offensive. But now that she was left alone, she seemed quite horrified when I begged her to remain with me in the warm dining-parlor and enjoy her orange as she liked best. And so it was in everything. Miss Jenkins's rules were made more stringent than ever, because the framer of them was gone where there could be no appeal. In all things else Miss Matilda was meek and undecided to a fault. I have heard Fanny turn her round twenty times in a morning about dinner, just as the little hussy chose, and I sometimes fancied she worked on Miss Matilda's weakness in order to bewilder her, and to make her feel more in the power of her clever servant. I determined that I would not leave her till I had seen what sort of a person Martha was, and if I found her trustworthy, I would tell her not to trouble her mistress with every little decision. Martha was blunt and plain-spoken to a fault, otherwise she was a brisk, well-meaning, but very ignorant girl. She had not been with us a week before Miss Matilda and I were astounded one morning by the receipt of a letter from a cousin of hers, who had been twenty or thirty years in India, and who had lately, as we had seen by the Army List, returned to England, bringing with him an invalid wife who had never been introduced to her English relations. Major Jenkins wrote to propose that he and his wife should spend a night at Cranford, on his way to Scotland, at the inn if it did not suit Miss Matilda to receive them into her house, in which case they should hope to be with her as much as possible during the day. Of course it must suit her, as she said, for all Cranford knew that she had her sister's bedroom at Liberty, but I am sure she wished the Major had stopped in India and forgotten his cousins out and out. Oh! how must I manage, she asked helplessly. If Deborah had been alive she would have known what to do with the gentleman visitor. Must I put razors in this dressing-room? Dear, dear, and I've got none. Deborah would have had them. And slippers and coat-brushes? I suggested that probably he would bring all these things with him. And after dinner, how am I to know when to get up and leave him to his wine? Deborah would have done it so well she would have been quite in her element. Will he want coffee, do you think? I undertook the management of the coffee and told her I would instruct Martha in the act of waiting, in which it must be owned she was terribly deficient, and that I had no doubt Major and Mrs. Jenkins would understand the quiet mode in which a lady lived by herself in a country town. But she was sadly fluttered. I made her empty her decanters and bring up two fresh bottles of wine. I wished I could have prevented her from being present at my instructions to Martha, for she frequently cut in with some fresh direction, muddling the poor girl's mind as she stood open mouthed, listening to us both. Hand the vegetables round, said I, foolishly I see now, for it was aiming at more than we could accomplish with quietness and simplicity, and then, seeing her look bewildered, I added, take the vegetables round to people and let them help themselves. And mind you go first to the ladies, put in, Miss Matilda, always go to the ladies before gentlemen when you are waiting. I'll do it as you tell me, ma'am, said Martha, but I like Lad's best. We felt very uncomfortable and shocked at this speech of Martha's, yet I don't think she meant any harm, and on the whole she attended very well to our directions, except that she nudged the Major when he did not help himself as soon as she expected to the potatoes while she was handing them round. The Major and his wife were quiet, unpretending people, enough when they did come, languid as all East Indians are, I suppose. We were rather dismayed at their bringing two servants with them, a Hindu body-servant for the Major, and a steady, elderly maid for his wife, but they slept at the inn and took off a good deal of the responsibility by attending carefully to their masters and mistress's comfort. Martha, to be sure, had never ended her staring at the East Indians' white turban and brown complexion, and I saw that Miss Matilda shrunk away from him a little as he waited at dinner. Indeed she asked me when they were gone if he did not remind me of Bluebeard. On the whole the visit was most satisfactory, and is a subject of conversation even now with Miss Matilda. At the time it greatly excited Cranford and even stirred up the apathetic and honourable Mrs. Jameson to some expression of interest, when I went to call and thank her for the kind answers she had vouched safe to Miss Matilda's inquiries as to the arrangement of a gentleman's dressing-room—answers which I must confess she had given in the wearied manner of the Scandinavian prophetess. Leave me, leave me to repose. And now I come to the love affair. It seems that Miss Pohl had a cousin, once or twice removed, who had offered to Miss Matty long ago. Now this cousin lived four or five miles from Cranford on his own estate, but his property was not large enough to entitle him to rank higher than a yeoman, or rather was something of the pride which apes humility he had refused to push himself on, as so many of his class had done, into the ranks of the squires. He would not allow himself to be called Thomas Holbrooke Esquire, he even sent back letters with his address, telling the Post-Mrs. at Cranford that his name was Mr. Thomas Holbrooke Yeoman. He rejected all domestic innovations. He would have the house, door, stand open in summer and shut in winter, without knocker or bell to summon a servant. The closed fist or the knob of a stick did this office for him if he found the door locked. He despised every refinement which had not its root deep down in humanity. If people were not ill, he saw no necessity for moderating his voice. He spoke the dialect of the country in perfection, and constantly used it in conversation, although Miss Pohl, who gave me these particulars, added that he read aloud more beautifully and with more feeling than any one she had ever heard, except the late Rector. "'And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?' I asked. "'Oh, I don't know. She was willing enough, I think, but you know Cousin Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the Rector and Miss Jenkins.' "'Well, but they were not to marry him,' said I, impatiently. "'No, but they did not like Miss Maddie to marry below her rank. You know she was the Rector's daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter Arleigh. Miss Jenkins thought a lot of that.' "'Poor Miss Maddie,' said I. "'Nay, now, I don't know anything more than that he offered and was refused. Miss Maddie might not like him, and Miss Jenkins might never have said a word. It is only a guess of mine.' "'Has she never seen him since?' I inquired. "'No, I think not. You see, Woodley, Cousin Thomas's house, lies half way between Cranford and Musselton, and I know he made Musselton his market town very soon after he had offered to Miss Maddie, and I don't think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since, once when I was walking with Miss Maddie in High Street, and suddenly she darted from me and went up Shire Lane. A few minutes after I was startled by meeting Cousin Thomas.' "'How old is he?' I asked after pause of Castle Building. "'He must be about seventy, I think, my dear,' said Miss Poe, blowing up my castle as if by gunpowder into small fragments. Very soon after, at least during my visit to Miss Matilda, I had the opportunity of seeing Mr. Holbrook, seeing, too, his first encounter with his former love after thirty or forty years' separation. I was helping to decide whether any of the new assortment of coloured silks, which they had just received at the shop, would do to match a grey-and-black Musseline Delayne that wanted a new breath, when a tall, thin, Don Coyote-looking old man came into the shop for some woolen gloves. I had never seen the person, who was rather striking before, and I watched him rather attentively while Miss Matty listened to the shopman. The stranger wore a blue coat with brass buttons, drab breeches, and gators, and drummed with his fingers on the counter until he was attended to. When he answered the shop boy's question, "'What can I have the pleasure of showing you to-day, sir?' I saw Miss Matilda start, and then suddenly sit down and instantly I guessed who it was. She had made some inquiry which had to be carried round to the other shopman. Miss Jenkins once the black sarsen at two and two pence the yard, and Mr. Holberg caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides. Maddie! Miss Matilda! Miss Jenkins! God bless my soul! I should not have known you. How are you? How are you?' He kept shaking her hand in a way which proved the warmth of his friendship, but he repeated so often, as to himself, I should not have known you, that any sentimental romance which I might be inclined to build was quite done away with by his manner. However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop, and then waving the shopman with the unpurchased gloves on one side, with, another time, sir, another time, he walked home with us. I am happy to say my client, Miss Matilda, also left the shop in an equally bewildered state, not having purchased either green or red silk. Mr. Holberg was evidently full with the honest, loud-spoken joy at meeting his old love again. He touched on the changes that had taken place. He even spoke of Miss Jenkins as your poor sister. Well, well, we all have our faults. And bad us good-bye with many a hope that he should soon see Miss Matty again. She went straight to her room, and never came back till our early tea-time, when I thought she looked as if she had been crying. CHAPTER IV A Visit to an Old Bachelor A few days after a note came from Mr. Holberg, asking us, impartially asking both of us, in a formal old-fashioned style, to spend a day at his house, a long June day, for it was June now. He named that he had also invited his cousin, Miss Pole, so that we might join in a fly which could be put up at his house. I expected Miss Matty to jump at this invitation, but no. Miss Pole and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought it was improper, and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover. Then came a more serious difficulty. She did not think Deborah would have liked her to go. This took us half a day's good hard talking to get over, but at the first sentence of relenting I seized the opportunity, and wrote and dispatched an acceptance in her name, fixing day and hour that all may be decided and done with. The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her, and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent home and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with us on Thursday. She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley. She had evidently never been there before, and although she little dreamt I knew anything of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor at the thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and round which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish imaginations had clustered. It was a long drive there through paved, jolting lanes. Miss Matilda sat bolt upright and looked wistfully out of the windows as we drew near the end of our journey. The aspect of the country was quiet and pastoral. Woodley stood among fields, and there was an old fashioned garden where roses and current bushes touched each other, and where the feathery asparagus formed a pretty background to the pinks and ghillie-flowers. There was no drive up to the door. We got out at a little gate and walked up a straight box-edged path. My cousin might make a drive, I think, said Miss Pole, who was afraid of earache, and had only her cap on. I think it is very pretty, said Miss Matty, with a soft plaintiveness in her voice, and almost in a whisper, for just then Mr. Holbrook appeared at the door, rubbing his hands in a very effervescence of hospitality. He looked more like my idea of Don Coyote than ever, and yet the lightness was only external. His respectable housekeeper stood modestly at the door to bid us welcome, and while she led the elder ladies upstairs to a bedroom, I begged to look about the garden. My request evidently pleased the old gentleman, who took me all around the place and showed me his six and twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet. As we went along, he surprised me occasionally by repeating apt and beautiful quotations from the poets, ranging easily from Shakespeare and George Herbert to those of our own day. He did this as naturally as if he were thinking aloud, and their true and beautiful words were the best expression he could find for what he was thinking or feeling. To be sure, he called Byron, my Lord Byron, and pronounced the name of Gotha strictly in accordance with English sound of the letters, as Gotha goes, ye ever verdant places, etc. All together I never met with a man, before or since, who had spent so long a life in a secluded and not impressive country, with ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly change of season and beauty. When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the kitchen, for so I supposed the room ought to be called, as there were oak-dressers and cupboards all around, and over by the side of the fireplace only a small Turkish carpet sat in the middle of the flag-floor. The room might have easily been made into a handsome dark oak dining-parlor by removing the oven and a few other apparturtenances of a kitchen, which were evidently never used, the real cooking place being at some distance. The room in which we were expected to sit was a stiffly furnished, ugly apartment, but that in which we did sit was what Mr. Hullbrook called the counting-house, where he paid his laborers their weekly wages at a great desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting room, looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree shadows, was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the table. He was evidently half ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect. They were of all kinds, poetry and wild, weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such were classical or established favorites. Ah, he said, we farmers ought not to have much time for reading, yet somehow one can't help it. What a pretty room, said Miss Maddie, Soto Boce. What a pleasant place, I said aloud, almost simultaneously. Nay, if you like it, replied he, but can you sit on these great, black leather, three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the best parlor, but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place. It was the smarter place, but like most smart things, not at all pretty or pleasant or home-like. So while we were at dinner the servant girl dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sat there all the rest of the day. We had pudding before meat, and I thought Mr. Holbrook was going to make some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began, I don't know whether you like new-fangled ways. Oh, not at all, said Miss Maddie. No more do I, said he. My housekeeper will have these in her new fashion, or else I tell her that, when I was a young man, we used to keep strictly to my father's rule. No broth, no ball, no ball, no beef. And always began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in the broth with the beef, and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our broth, we had no ball, which we liked to deal better, and beef came last of all, and only those who had done justice to the broth and the ball. Now folks begin with sweet things and turn their dinners topsy-turvy. When the ducks and green peas came, we looked at each other in dismay. We had only two pronged, black-handled forks. It is true the steel was as bright as silver, but what were we to do? Miss Maddie picked up her peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Amine ate her grains of rice after her previous feast with the ghoul. Miss Pole sighed over her delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her plate untasted, for they would drop between the prongs. I looked at my host, the peas were going wholesale into his capacious mouth, shoveled up by his large, round-ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived. My friends, in spite of my precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an ungentile thing, and if Mr. Holbrook had not been so heartily hungry, he would probably have seen that the good peas went away almost untouched. After dinner a clay pipe was brought in and a spittoon, and asking us to retire to another room where he would soon join us if we disliked tobacco-spoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Maddie and requested her to fill the bowl. This was a compliment to a lady in his youth, but it was rather inappropriate to propose it as an honour to Miss Maddie, who had been trained by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in utter apporance. But if it was a shock to her refinement it was also a gratification to her feelings to be thus selected, so she daintily stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe, and then we withdrew. It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor, said Miss Maddie softly, as we settled ourselves in the counting-house. I only hope it is not improper, so many pleasant things are. What a number of books he has, said Miss Pohl, looking round the room, and how dusty they are! I think it must be like one of the great Dr. Johnson's rooms, said Miss Maddie. What a superior man your cousin must be! Yes, said Miss Pohl, he is a great reader, but I am afraid he has got into very uncouth habits with living alone. Oh, uncouth is too hard a word. I should call him eccentric. Very clever people always are, replied Miss Maddie. When Mr. Holbook returned he proposed to walk in the fields, but the two elder ladies were afraid of dampen dirt, and had only very unbecoming calloushes to put over their caps, so they declined, and I was again his companion in a turn which he said he was obliged to take to see after his men. He strode along, either wholly forgetting my existence, or soothed into silence by his pipe, and yet it was not silence exactly. He walked before me with a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him, and as some tree or cloud or glimpse of distant upland pasture struck him, he quoted poetry to himself, saying it out loud in a grand, sonorous voice, with just the emphasis that true feeling and appreciation give. We came upon an old cedar tree, which stood at one end of the house. The cedar spreads his dark green layers of shade. Capital term layers, wonderful man. I did not know whether he was speaking to me or not, but I put in an assenting wonderful, though I knew nothing about it, just because I was tired of being forgotten, and of being consequently silent. He turned sharp round. I, you may say wonderful, why, when I saw the review of his poems in Blackwood, I sent off within an hour, and walked seven miles to Misselton, for the horses were not in the way, and ordered them. Now, what color are ash-buds in March? Is the man going mad? thought I. He is very light, Don Coyote. What color are they, I say, repeated he vehemently. I am sure I don't know, sir, said I, with the meekness of ignorance. I knew you didn't. No more did I, old fool that I am, till this young man comes and tells me. Black as ash-buds in March, and I've lived all my life in the country, more shame for me not to know. Black, they are jet-black, madam, and he went off again, swinging along to the music of some rhyme he had got holed up. When we came back nothing would serve him, but he must read us the poems he had been speaking of, and Miss Pole encouraged him in his proposal. I thought, because she wished me to hear his beautiful reading, of which she had boasted. But she afterwards said it was because she had got to a difficult part of her crochet, and wanted to count her stitches without having to talk. Whatever he had proposed would have been right to Miss Maddie, although she did fall sound asleep within five minutes after he had begun reading a long poem, called Locksley Hall, and had a comfortable nap unobserved till he ended, when the cessation of his voice awakened her up, and she said, feeling that something was expected and that Miss Pole was counting, what a pretty book! Pretty, madam, it's beautiful! Pretty, indeed! Oh, yes, I meant beautiful, such she fluttered at his disapproval of her word. It is so like that beautiful poem of Dr. Johnson's my sister used to read. I forget the name of it. What was it, my dear, turning to me? Which do you mean, ma'am? What was it about? I don't remember what it was about, and I've quite forgotten what the name of it was, but it was written by Dr. Johnson, and was very beautiful, and very like what Mr. Holbrook has just been reading. I don't remember it, said he, reflectively, but I don't know Dr. Johnson's poems well. I must read them. As we were getting into the fly to return, I heard Mr. Holbrook say he should call on the lady soon and inquire how they got home, and this evidently pleased and fluttered Miss Maddie at the time he said it. But after we had lost sight of the old house among the trees, her sentiments toward the master of it were gradually absorbed into a distressing wonder as to whether Martha had broken her word and seized on the opportunity of her mistress's absence to have a follower. Martha looked good and steady and composed enough as she came to help us out. She was always careful of Miss Maddie, and tonight she made use of this unlucky speech. Ah, dear ma'am, to think of your going out in an evening in such a thin shawl. It's no better than Muslim. At your age, ma'am, you should be careful. My age, said Miss Maddie, almost speaking crossly for her, for she was usually gentle. My age! Why, how old do you think I am that you talk about my age? Well, ma'am, I should say you were not far short of sixty, but folks's looks is often against them, and I'm sure I meant no harm. Martha, I'm not yet fifty-two, said Miss Maddie, with grave emphasis, for probably the last remembrance of her youth had come very vividly before her this day, and she was annoyed at finding that golden time is so far away in the past. But she never spoke of any former and more intimate acquaintance with Mr. Holbrook. She had probably met with so little sympathy in her early love that she had shut it up close in her heart, and it was only by a sort of watching, which I could hardly avoid since Miss Pohl's confidence, that I saw how faithful her poor heart had been in its sorrow and its silence. She gave me some good reason for wearing her best cap every day, and sat near the window in spite of her rheumatism in order to see, without being seen, down into the street. He came. He put his open palms upon his knees, which were far apart, as he sat with his head bent down, whistling, after we had replied to his inquiries about our safe return. Suddenly he jumped up. Well, ma'am, have you any commands for Paris? I am going there in a week or two. To Paris, we both exclaimed. Yes, ma'am, I've never been there before, and always had a wish to go, and I think if I don't go soon, I may not go at all. So as soon as the hay has got in, I shall go before harvest time. We were so much astonished that we had no commissions. Just as he was going out of the room he turned back with his favorite exclamation, God bless my soul, madam, but I nearly forgot half my errand. Here are the poems for you you admired so much the other evening at my house. He tugged away at a parcel in his coat pocket. Goodbye, Miss, and he, goodbye, Maddie, take care of yourself, and he was gone. But he had given her a book and he had called her Maddie, just as he used to do thirty years ago. I wish he would not go to Paris, said Miss Matilda anxiously. I don't believe frogs will agree with him. He used to have to be very careful with what he ate, which was curious and so strong looking a young man. Soon after this I took my leave, giving many an injection to Martha to look after her mistress, and to let me know if she thought that Miss Matilda was not so well, in which case I would volunteer a visit to my old friend without noticing Martha's intelligence to her. Accordingly I received a line or two from Martha every now and then, and about November I had a note to say her mistress was very low and sadly off her food, and the account made me so uneasy that although Martha did not decidedly summon me, I packed up my things and went. I received a warm welcome in spite of the little flurry produced by my impromptu visit, for I had only been able to give a day's notice. Miss Matilda looked miserably ill, and I prepared to comfort and gossip her. I went down to have a private talk with Martha. How long has your mistress been so poorly? I asked, as I stood by the kitchen fire. Well, I think it's better than a fortnight it is. I know it was one Tuesday after Miss Pole had been that she went into the smoping lay. I thought she was tired, and it would go off with a night's rest, but no, she has gone on and on ever since, till I thought at my duty to write to you, ma'am. You did quite right, Martha. It is a comfort to think she has so faithful a servant about her. And I hope you find your place comfortable. Well, ma'am, Mrs. is very kind, and there's plenty to eat and drink, and no more work but what I can do easily, but—Martha hesitated. But what, Martha? Why, it seems so hard of Mrs. not to let me have any followers. There are such lots of young fellows in the town, and many a one has offered to keep company with me, and I may never be in such a likely place again, and it's wasting an opportunity. Many a girl, as I know, would have a mumba-notes to missus, but I've given my word, and I'll stick to it, or else this is just the house for missus never to be the wiser, if they did come, and it's such a capable kitchen, there's such dark corners in it, I'd be bound to hide anyone. I counted up last Sunday night, for I'll not deny I was crying because I had to shut the door in Jem Herron's face, but he is a steady young man, fit for any girl, only I had given missus my word. Martha was all but crying again, and I had little comfort to give her, for I knew from old experience of the horror with which both the Miss Jenkinses looked upon followers, and in Miss Maddie's present nervous state this dread was not likely to be lessened. I went to see Miss Pole the next day, and took her completely by surprise, for she had not been to see Miss Matilda for two days. And now I must go back with you, my dear, for I promise to let her know how Thomas Holbrook went on, and I'm sorry to say his housekeeper has sent me word today that he hasn't longed to live. Poor Thomas, that journey to Paris was quite too much for him. His housekeeper says he has hardly ever been round his field since, but just sits with his hands on his knees in the counting-house, not reading or anything, but only saying what a wonderful city Paris was. Paris has much to answer for if it's killed my cousin Thomas, for a better man never lived. Miss Miss Matilda, know of his illness, asked I. A new light asked to the cause of her in disposition dawning upon me. Dear, to be sure, yes, has she not told you? I let her know a fortnight ago or more when I first heard of it. How odd she shouldn't have told you! Not at all, I thought, but I did not say anything. I felt almost guilty of having spied too curiously into that tender heart, and I was not going to speak of its secrets hidden Miss Maddie believed from all the world. I ushered Miss Pole into Miss Matilda's little drawing-room, and then left them alone. But I was not surprised when Martha came to my bedroom door to ask me to go down to dinner alone, for that Missus had one of her bad headaches. She came into the drawing-room at tea-time, but it was evidently an effort to her, and as if to make up for some reproachful feeling against her late sister, Miss Jenkins, which had been troubling her all the afternoon, and for which she now felt penitent, she kept telling me how good and how clever Deborah was in her youth, and how she used to settle what gowns they were to wear at all the parties, faint ghostly ideas of grim parties far away in the distance when Miss Maddie and Miss Pole were young, and how Deborah and her mother had started the Benefit Society for the Poor, and taught girls cooking and plain sewing, and how Deborah had once danced with the Lord, and how she used to visit Sir Peter Arleigh's and tried to remodel the quiet rectory establishment on the plans of Arleigh Hall, where they kept thirty servants, and how she had nursed Miss Maddie through a long, long illness of which I had never heard before, but which I now dated in my own mind as following this missile of the suit of Mr. Holbrook. So we taught softly and quietly of old times through the long November evening. The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr. Holbrook was dead. Miss Maddie heard the news in silence. In fact, from the account of the previous day it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept calling upon us for some expression of regret, asking if it was not sad that he was gone, and saying, to think of that pleasant day last June when he seemed so well, and he might have lived this dozen years if he had not gone to that wicked Paris where they are always having revolutions. She paused for some demonstration on our part. I saw Miss Maddie could not speak. She was trembling so nervously, so I said what I really felt, and after a call of some duration, all the time of which I have no doubt Miss Pole thought Miss Maddie received the news very calmly, our visitor took her leave. Miss Maddie made a strong effort to conceal her feelings, a concealment she practiced even with me, for she has never alluded to Mr. Holbrook again, although the book he gave her lies with her Bible on the little table by her bedside. She did not think I heard her when she asked the little milliner of Cranford to make her cap something like the Honorable Miss Jameson's, or that I noticed the reply, but she wears widow's caps, ma'am. Oh, I only meant something in that style, not widow's, of course, but rather light Mrs. Jameson's. This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous motion of head and hands which I have ever seen in Miss Maddie. The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr. Holbrook's death, Miss Matilda was very silent and thoughtful. After prayers she called Martha back and then she stood uncertain what to say. Martha, she said at last, you are young, and then she made so long a pause that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished sentence, dropped a curtsy and said, Yes, please, ma'am, two and twenty last third of October, please, ma'am. And perhaps, Martha, you may some time meet with a young man you like and who likes you. I did say you were not to have followers, but if you meet with such a young man and tell me, and I find he is respectable, I have no objection to his coming to see you once a week. God forbid, she said in a low voice, that I should grieve any young hearts. She spoke as if she were providing for some distant contingency, and was rather startled when Martha made her ready, eager answer. Please, ma'am, there's Jem Herne, and he is a joiner making three and six pence a day, and six foot one in his stocking feet. Please, ma'am, and if you'll ask about him to-morrow morning, every one will give him a character for steadiness, and he'll be glad enough to come to-morrow night, I'll be bound. Though Miss Matty was startled, she submitted to fate and love. CHAPTER V. OLD LETTERS I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual, small economies, careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction, any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a joint stock bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer stay because one of them had torn, instead of cutting, out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book. Of course, the corresponding pages at the other end came out as well, and this little unnecessary waste of paper, his private economy, chafed him more than all the loss of his money. Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in, the only way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so making them serve again. Even now, though tamed by age, I see him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they sent a whole inside of a half-sheet of note paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides. I am not above owning that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little banks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold. How people can bring themselves to use India rubber rings, which are a short of deification of string as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine. To me, an Indian rubber ring is a precious treasure. I have one which is not new, one that I picked up off the floor nearly six years ago. I have really tried to use it, but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance. Small pieces of butter grieve others. They cannot attend a conversation because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some people have of invariably taking more butter than they want. Have you not seen the anxious look, almost mesmeric, which such persons fix on the article? They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of sight by popping it into their own mouths and swallowing it down, and they are made really happy if the person on whose plate it lies unused suddenly breaks off a piece of toast, which he does not want at all, and eats up his butter. They think that this is not waste. Now, Miss Maddie Jenkins was cherry of candles. We had many devices to use as few as possible. In the winter afternoon she would sit knitting for two or three hours. She could do this in the dark or by fire-light, and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my waste-men's, she told me to keep blind man's holiday. They were usually brought in with tea, but we only burnt one at a time. As we lived in constant preparation for a friend who might come in any evening, but who never did, it required some contrivance to keep our two candles out of the same length, ready to be lighted, and to look as if we burnt two always. The candles took it in turns, and whatever we might be talking about or doing, Miss Maddie's eyes were habitually fixed upon the candle, ready to jump up and extinguish it and to light the other before they had become too uneven in length to be restored to equality in the course of the evening. One night I remember this candle economy particularly annoyed me. I had been very much tired of my compulsory blind man's holiday, especially as Miss Maddie had fallen asleep, and I did not like to stir the fire and run the risk of awakening her, so I could not even sit on the rug and scorch myself with sowing by fire-light, according to my usual custom. I fancied Miss Maddie must be dreaming of her early life, for she spoke one or two words in her uneasy sleep, bearing reference to persons who were dead long before. When Martha brought in the lighted candle and tea, Miss Maddie started into wakefulness with a strange, bewildered look around as if we were not the people she expected to see about her. There was a little sad expression that shadowed her face as she recognized me, but immediately afterward she tried to give me her usual smile. All through tea time her talk ran upon the days of her childhood and youth. Perhaps this reminded her of the desiromfulness of looking over all the old family letters and destroying such as ought not be allowed to fall into the hands of strangers, for she had often spoken of the necessity of this task, but had always shrunk from it with a timid dread of something painful. Tonight, however, she rose up after tea and went for them. In the dark, for she peaked herself on the precise neatness of all her chamber arrangements, and used to look uneasily at me when I lighted a bed-candle to go to another room for anything. When she returned there was a faint, pleasant smell of tonkwin beans in the room. I had always noticed the scent about any of the things which had belonged to her mother, and many of the letters were addressed to her, yellow bundles of love letters, sixty or seventy years old. Miss Maddie undid the packet with a sigh, but she stifled it directly, as if it were hardly right to regret the flight of time, or of life, either. We agreed to look them over separately, each taking a different letter out of the same bundle, and describing its contents to the other before destroying it. I never knew what sad work the reading of old letters was before that evening, though I could hardly tell why. The letters were as happy as letters could be, at least those early letters were. There was in them a vivid and intense sense of the present time, which seemed so strong and full as if it could never pass away, and as if the warm, living hearts that so express themselves could never die, and be as is nothing to the sunny earth. I should have felt less melancholy, I believe, if the letters had been more so. I saw the tears stealing down the well-worn furrows of Miss Maddie's cheeks, and her spectacles often wanted wiping. I trusted at last that she would light the other candle, for my own eyes were rather dim, and I wanted more light to see the pale, faded ink, but no, even through her tears, she saw and remembered her little economical ways. The earliest set of letters were two bundles tied together, and ticketed, in Miss Jenkins's handwriting, letters interchanged between my ever-honored father and my dearly beloved mother, prior to their marriage, in July 1774. I should guess that the rector of Cranford was about twenty-seven years of age when he wrote those letters, and Miss Maddie told me that her mother was just eighteen at the time of her wedding. With my idea of the rector derived from a picture in the dining-room, stiff and stately, in a huge, full-bottomed wig, with gown, cassock, and bands, and his hand upon a copy of the only sermon he ever published, it was strange to read these letters. They were full of eager, passionate ardor, short, homely sentences, right fresh from the heart, very different from the grand, Latinized, Johnsonian style of the printed sermon, preached before some judge at a size-time. His letters were a curious contrast to those of his bride-girl. She was evidently rather annoyed at his demands upon her for expressions of love, and could not quite understand what he meant by repeating the same thing over and over in so many different ways. But what she was quite clear about was a longing for a white, paduassoy, whatever that might be, and six or seven letters were principally occupied in asking her lover to use his influence with her parents, who evidently kept her in good order, to obtain this or that article of text, more especially the white paduassoy. He cared nothing how she was dressed. She was always lovely enough for him, as he took pains to assure her when she begged him to express in his answers a predilection for particular pieces of finery, in order that she might show what he said to her parents. But at length he seemed to find out that she would not be married till she had a true so to her mind, and then he sent her a letter which had evidently accompanied a whole box full of finery, and in which he requested that she might be dressed in everything her heart desired. This was the first letter, ticketed in a frail, delicate hand, from my dearest John. Shortly afterwards they were married, I suppose, from the intermission in their correspondence. We must burn them, I think, said Miss Maddie, looking doubtfully at me. No one will care for them when I am gone. And one by one she dropped them in the middle of the fire, watching each blaze up, die out, and rise away, in faint white, ghostly semblance of the chimney, before she gave another to the same fate. The room was light enough now, but I, like her, was fascinated into watching the destruction of those letters, into which the honest warmth of a manly heart had been poured forth. The next letter, likewise docketed by Miss Jenkins, was endorsed, letter of pious congratulation and exhortation from my venerable grandfather to my beloved mother, on occasion of my own birth. Also some practical remarks on the desirability of keeping warm the extremities of infants from my excellent grandmother. The first part was indeed a severe and forcible picture of the responsibilities of mothers, and a warning against the evils that were in the world, and lying in ghostly wait for the little baby of two days old. His wife did not write, said the old gentleman, because he had forbidden it, she being indisposed with a sprained ankle, which, he said, quite incapacitated her from holding a pen. However, at the foot of the page was a small T.O., and on turning it over, sure enough, there was a letter to my dear, dearest Molly, begging her, when she left her room, whatever she did, to go upstairs before going down, and telling her to wrap her baby's feet up in flannel and keep it warm by the fire, although it was summer, for babies were so tender. It was pretty to see from the letters, which were evidently exchanged with some frequency between the young mother and the grandmother, how the girlish vanity was being weeded out of her heart by her love for her baby. The white pageoise soy figured again in the letters, with almost as much vigor as before. In one it was being made into a christening cloak for the baby. It decked it when it went with its parents to spend a day or two at Arleigh Hall. It added to its charms when it was the prettiest little baby that ever was seen. Dear mother, I wish you could see her. Not any partiality I do think she will grow up a regular beauty. I thought of Miss Jenkins, gray, withered, and wrinkled, and I wondered if her mother had known her in the courts of heaven, and then I knew that she had, and that they stood there in angelic guise. There was a great gap before any of the rector's letters appeared, and then his wife had changed her mode of her endorsement. It was no longer from my dearest John. It was from my honoured husband. The letters were written on the occasion of the publication of the same sermon which was represented in the picture. The preaching before My Lord, Judge, and Publishing by Request was evidently the culminating point, the event of his life. It had been necessary for him to go up to London to superintend it through the press. Many friends had to be called upon and consulted before he could decide on any printer fit for so onerous a task, and at length it was arranged that Jay and Jay Rivingtons were to have the honourable responsibility. The worthy rector seemed to be strung up by the occasion to a high literary pitch, for he could hardly write a letter to his wife without cropping out into Latin. I remember the end of one of his letters ran thus. I shall ever hold the virtuous qualities of my molly in remembrance. Dumb memore ipseme, dumb spiritus regit artiste. Which considering that the English of his correspondent was sometimes at fault in grammar and often in spelling, it might be taken as a proof of how much he idealised his molly. And as Miss Jenkins used to say, people talk a great deal about idealising nowadays whatever that may mean. But this was nothing to a fit of writing classical poetry which soon seized him, in which his molly figured away as Maria. The letter containing the Carmen was endorsed by her. Hebrew verses sent to me by my honoured husband. I thought to have a letter about killing the pig, but must wait. Come to send the poetry to Sir Peter Arleigh as my husband desires. And in a postscriptum note in his handwriting it was stated that the ode had appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, December 1782. Her letters back to her husband, treasured as fondly by him, as if they had been M. T. Ciceronis Epistole, were more satisfactory to an absent husband and father than his could ever have been to her. She told him how Deborah sewed her seam very neatly every day, and read to her in the books he had sent her. Now she was a very forward, good child, but would ask questions her mother could not answer, but how she did not let herself down by saying she did not know, but took to stirring the fire or sending the forward child on an errand. Maddie was now the mother's darling, and promised, like her sister at her age, to be a great beauty. I was reading this aloud to Miss Maddie, who smiled and sighed a little at the hope, so fondly expressed that little Maddie might not be vain even if she were a beauty. I had very pretty hair, my dear, said Miss Matilda, and not a bad mouth. And I saw her soon afterwards adjust her cap and draw herself up. But to return to Miss Jenkins's letters. She told her husband about the poor in the parish, what homely domestic medicine she had administered, what kitchen physics she had sent. She had evidently held his displeasure as a rod in pickle over the heads of the ne'er-duels. She asked for his directions about the cows and pigs, and did not always obtain them as I have shown before. The kind old grandmother was dead when a little boy was born, soon after the publication of the sermon. But there was another letter of exhortation from the grandfather, more stringent and admonitory than ever, now that there was a boy to be guarded from the snares of the world. He described all the various sins into which men might fall, until I wondered how any man might ever come to a natural death. The gallows seemed as if it must have been the termination of the lives of most of the grandfather's friends and acquaintance, and I was not surprised at the way in which he spoke of this life being a veil of tears. It seemed curious that I should never have heard of this brother before, but I concluded that he had died young, or else surely his name would have been alluded to by his sisters. By and by we came to packets of Miss Jenkins's letters. These Miss Maddie did regret to burn. She said all the others had been only interesting to those who loved the writers, and that it seemed as if it would have hurt her to allow them to fall into the hands of strangers who had not known her dear mother, and how good she was, although she did not always spell quite in the modern fashion. But Debra's letters were so very superior. Anyone might profit by reading them. It was a long time since she had read Mrs. Chappone. But she knew she used to think that Debra could have said the same things quite as well, and as for Mrs. Carter, people thought a deal of her letters, just because she had written Epictus, but she was quite sure Debra would never have made use of such a common expression as, I cannot be fast. Miss Maddie did grudge burning these letters, it was evident. She would not let them be carelessly passed over with any quiet reading and skipping to myself. She took them from me, and even lighted the second candle in order to read them aloud with a proper emphasis and without stumbling over the big words. Oh, dear, how I wanted facts instead of reflections before those letters were concluded. They lasted us two nights, and I won't deny that I made the use of the time to think of many other things, and yet I was always at my post at the end of each sentence. The rector's letters and those of his wife and mother-in-law had all been tolerably short and pithy, written in a straight hand with the lines very close together. Sometimes the whole letter was contained on a mere scrap of paper. The paper was very yellow and the ink very brown. Some of the sheets were, as Miss Maddie made me observe, the old original post, with the stamp in the corner representing a post-boy riding for life and twanging his horn. The letters of Mrs. Jenkins and her mother were fastened with a great red-wound wafer, for it was before Mrs. Edgeworth patronage had banished wafers from polite society. It was evident from the tenor of what was said that Franks were in great request, and were even used as a means of paying debts by needy members of Parliament. The rector sealed his epistles with an immense coat of arms, and showed by the care with which he had performed this ceremony that he expected they should be cut open, not broken by any thoughtless or impatient hand. Now Miss Jenkins's letters were of a later date in form and riding. She wrote on the square sheet which we have learned to call old-fashioned. Her hand was admirably calculated, together with her use of many syllable words, to fill up a sheet, and then came the pride and delight of crossing. Poor Miss Maddie got sadly puzzled with this, for the words gathered sighs like snowballs, and towards the end of her letter Miss Jenkins used to become quite sesquipedelia. In one to her father, slightly theological and controversial in its tone, she had spoken of Herod, tetrarch of Edumia. Miss Maddie read it Herod, pedrarch of Eretria, and was just as well pleased as if she had been right. I can't quite remember the date, but I think it was in 1805 that Miss Jenkins wrote the longest series of letters, on occasion of her absence on a visit to some friends near Newcastle-upon-Time. These friends were intimate with the commandant of the garrison there, and heard from him of all the preparations that were being made to repel the invasion of Bonaparte, which some people imagined might take place at the mouth of the time. Miss Jenkins was evidently very much alarmed, and the first part of her letters was often written in pretty intelligible English, conveying particulars of the preparations which were made in the family with whom she was residing against the dreaded event. The bundles of clothes that were packed up ready for a flight to Alston Moor, a wild, hilly piece of ground between Northumberland and Cumberland, the signal that was to be given for this flight, and for the simultaneous turning out of the volunteers under arms, which said signal was to consist, if I remember rightly, in ringing the church bells in a particular and ominous manner. One day, when Miss Jenkins and her hosts were at a dinner-party in Newcastle, this warning summons was actually given, not a very wise proceeding if there be any truth in the moral attached to the fable of the boy and the wolf, but so it was, and Miss Jenkins, hardly recovered from her fright, wrote the next day to describe the sound, the breathless shock, the hurry and alarm, and then, taking breath, she added, How trivial, my dear father, do all our apprehensions of the last evening appear, at the present moment, to calm and inquiring minds. And here, Miss Maddie broke in. But indeed, my dear, they were not at all trivial or trifling at the time. I know I used to wake up in the night many a time and think I heard the tramp of the French entering Cranford. Many people talked of hiding themselves in the salt mines, and meat would have kept capital down there, only perhaps we should have been thirsty. And my father preached a whole set of sermons on the occasion, one set in the mornings, all about David and Goliath, to spirit up the people to fight with spades or bricks, if need were, and the other set in the afternoons, proving that Napoleon, that was another name for Boney, as we used to call him, was all the same as an Apian or Abaddon. I remember my father rather thought he should be asked to print this last set, but the parish had, perhaps, had enough of them with hearing. Peter, Marmaduke, Arleigh Jenkins, poor Peter, as Miss Maddie began to call him, was at school at Shrewsbury by this time. The rector took up his pen and rubbed up his Latin once more to correspond with his boy. It was very clear that the lads were what are called show-letters. They were of a highly mental description, giving an account of his studies and his intellectual hopes of various kinds, with an occasional quotation from the classics. But now and then the animal nature broke out in such a little sentence as this, evidently written in a trembling hurry after the letter had been inspected. Mother dear, do send me a cake and put plenty of citron in. The mother dear probably answered her boy in the form of cakes and goodie, for there were none of her letters among this set, but a whole collection of the rectors, to whom the Latin in his boy's letters was like a trumpet call to the old war-horse. I do not know much about Latin, certainly, and it is perhaps an ornamental language, but not very useful, I think, at least to judge from the bits I remember out of the rector's letters. One was, you have not got that town in your map of Ireland, but bonus Bernardus nonvidit omnia as the proverbia se. Presently it became very evident that poor Peter got himself into many scrapes. There were letters of stilted penitence to his father, for some wrongdoing, and among them all was a badly written, badly sealed, badly directed, blotted note. My dear, dear, dear, dearest mother, I will be a better boy. I will indeed, but don't please be ill for me. I am not worth it, but I will be good, darling mother. Miss Maddie could not speak for crying after she had read this note. She gave it to me in silence, and then got up and took it to her sacred recesses in her own room, for fear by any chance it might get burnt. Poor Peter, she said, he was always in such scrapes. He was too easy. They led him wrong, and they left him in the lurch. But he was too fond of mischief. He could never resist a joke. Poor Peter. End of chapter 5. Read by Cibela Denton.