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 was 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

bakehouse 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 apologise 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 Jenkyns, 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-upbraidings 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

were 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 acerbity to her temper. All this

was borne by Miss Jessie and her father with more than placidity—with

absolute tenderness. I forgave Miss Jessie her singing out of tune, and

her juvenility of dress, when I saw her at home. I came to perceive

that Captain Brown’s dark Brutus 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 barrack 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-servant’s labours in every way—knowing, most likely,

that his daughter’s illness made the place a hard one.

He endeavoured to make peace with Miss Jenkyns soon after the memorable

dispute I have named, by a present of a wooden fire-shovel (his own

making), having heard her say how much the grating of an iron one

annoyed her. She received the present with cool gratitude, and thanked

him formally. When he was gone, she bade 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-shovel.

Such was the state of things when I left Cranford and went to Drumble.

I had, however, several correspondents, who kept me _au fait_ 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 Flint’s” of the old song; for at the end of every

sentence of news came a fresh direction as to some crochet commission

which I was to execute for her. Miss Matilda Jenkyns (who did not mind

being called Miss Matty, when Miss Jenkyns 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 postscript 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 recantation of every opinion she

had given in the letter). Then came Miss Jenkyns—Debōrah, as she liked

Miss Matty 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 model in character; and, indeed, she was not unlike the

stern prophetess in some ways, making allowance, of course, for modern

customs and difference in dress. Miss Jenkyns 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

women 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 Jenkyns, how I

honoured her!) and I will give an extract, more especially because it

relates to our friend Captain Brown:—

“The Honourable Mrs Jamieson 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 quondam friend,

Lord Mauleverer. 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

Jamieson’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 confess, to ascertain in what manner 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 Jessie

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 and 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 Pole and Miss Matty wrote to me by the same post. Such a piece of

news as Lord Mauleverer’s visit was not to be lost on the Cranford

letter-writers: they made the most of it. Miss Matty 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 Matty’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 Jamieson, 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 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 Jenkyns had

purchased a new carpet for the drawing-room. Oh, the busy work Miss

Matty 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,

lo! in a quarter of an hour the sun had moved, and was blazing away on a

fresh spot; and down again we went on our knees to alter the position of

the newspapers. We were very busy, too, one whole morning, before Miss

Jenkyns 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 every

guest to walk upon in London?

Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns were not very cordial to each other. The

literary dispute, of which I had seen the beginning, was a “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 Jenkyns

could not refrain from talking at Captain Brown; and, though he did not

reply, he drummed with his fingers, which action she felt and resented

as very disparaging to Dr Johnson. He was rather ostentatious in his

preference of the writings of Mr Boz; would walk through the streets so

absorbed in them that he all but ran against Miss Jenkyns; 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 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 worn,

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 Matty, that everything had been

done, in fact. A medical man, of high repute in that country

neighbourhood, had been sent for, and every injunction he had given was

attended to, regardless of expense. Miss Matty 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 Matty, 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 as 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 in her pretty eyes, as she

said—

“But, to be sure, what a town Cranford is for kindness! I don’t suppose

any one has a better dinner than usual cooked but the best part of 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 Mauleverer 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

now he is gone abroad.”

I had often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments and

small opportunities in Cranford; the rose-leaves that were gathered ere

they fell to make into a potpourri for someone who had no garden; the

little bundles 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 worth while to

perform, were all attended to in Cranford. Miss Jenkyns 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 never could 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 Jenkyns 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 quavering

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

Jessie has been to us, God only knows!” and after the second time, he

got up hastily, shook hands all round 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 Jenkyns 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

Jenkyns, ma’am! Captain Brown is killed by them 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 Matty rushed out into the street at once, and

collared the man who was telling the tale.

[Picture: She brought the affrighted carter ... into the

drawing-room]

“Come in—come to my sister at once, Miss Jenkyns, the rector’s daughter.

Oh, man, man! 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, mum, it is true. I seed it myself,” and he shuddered at the

recollection. “The Captain was a-reading some new book as he was deep

in, a-waiting for the down train; 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 seed the child, and he darted on the line and cotched it up,

and his foot slipped, and the train came over him in no time. O Lord,

Lord! Mum, 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, mum,

wouldn’t he? God bless him!” The great rough carter puckered up his

manly face, and turned away to hide his tears. I turned to Miss

Jenkyns. 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 ever I have spoken contemptuously to the Captain!”

Miss Jenkyns arrayed herself to go out, telling Miss Matilda to give the

man a glass of wine. While she was away, Miss Matty and I huddled over

the fire, talking in a low and awestruck voice. I know we cried quietly

all the time.

Miss Jenkyns came home in a silent mood, and we durst not ask her many

questions. She told us that Miss Jessie had fainted, and that she and

Miss Pole 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 Hoggins says she cannot live many days, and she shall be spared this

shock,” said Miss Jessie, shivering with feelings to which she dared not

give way.

“But how can you manage, my dear?” asked Miss Jenkyns; “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 Pole told Miss Jenkyns 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 Jenkyns could

not exactly say how. Miss Pole was to stop with Miss Jessie. Mrs

Jamieson 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 Jenkyns 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 Jenkyns 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, there

to be interred. Miss Jessie had set her heart on following it to the

grave; and no dissuasives could alter her resolve. Her restraint upon

herself made her almost obstinate; she resisted all Miss Pole’s

entreaties and Miss Jenkyns’ advice. At last Miss Jenkyns gave up the

point; and after a silence, which I feared portended some deep

displeasure against Miss Jessie, Miss Jenkyns 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 interment. 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

Jenkyns sent out for a yard of black crape, 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 into 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 Jenkyns 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 Pole, Miss Matty, and I, meanwhile attended to Miss Brown: and hard

work we found it to relieve her querulous and never-ending complaints.

But if we were so weary and dispirited, what must Miss Jessie have been!

Yet she came back almost calm as if she had gained a new strength. She

put off her mourning dress, and came in, looking pale and gentle,

thanking us each with a 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 fill suddenly with tears, more than

if she had cried outright.

It was settled that Miss Pole was to remain with her all the watching

livelong night; and that Miss Matty 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 Jenkyns appeared at the

breakfast-table, equipped in her helmet-bonnet, and ordered Miss Matty

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 that in the 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 sister’s, 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. He 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, Harry, Archy;”—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 will I

trust in Him.”

In a few moments more Miss Brown lay calm and still—never to sorrow or

murmur more.

After this second funeral, Miss Jenkyns insisted that Miss Jessie should

come to stay with her rather than go back to the desolate house, which,

in fact, we learned 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 sew neatly,” said she, “and I like nursing. I think, too, I

could manage a house, if any one would try me as housekeeper; or I would

go into a shop as saleswoman, if they would have patience with me at

first.”

Miss Jenkyns 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 arrowroot, 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 which

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 Jenkyns

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 caller, whom you knew once, my dear Miss Jessie”—

Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed scarlet, and looked eagerly at

Miss Jenkyns.

“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 Jenkyns, giving it to Miss Jessie; and

while her head was bent over it, Miss Jenkyns 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 Jenkyns 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 Matty’s and began to be very busy, though I could see

how she trembled all over.

Miss Jenkyns rang the bell, and told the servant who answered it to show

Major Gordon upstairs; and, presently, in walked a tall, fine,

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 Jenkyns asked me if I would come and help her to tie up the

preserves in the store-room; and though Miss Jessie plucked at my gown,

and even looked up at me with begging eye, I durst not refuse to go

where Miss Jenkyns asked. Instead of tying up preserves in the

store-room, however, we went to talk in the dining-room; and there Miss

Jenkyns 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 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; and there was no one but herself to nurse her poor

Mary, or cheer and comfort her father during the time of illness. They

had 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 travelling in the East,

and was on his return home when, at Rome, he saw the account of Captain

Brown’s death in _Galignani_.

Just then Miss Matty, who had been out all the morning, and 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 round Miss Jessie’s waist!” Miss Matty’s

eyes looked large with terror.

[Picture: “With his arm around Miss Jessie’s waist!”]

Miss Jenkyns snubbed her down in an instant.

“The most proper place in the world for his arm to be in. 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

Matty, and with a double shock she left the room.

The last time I ever saw poor Miss Jenkyns was many years after this.

Mrs Gordon had kept up a warm and affectionate intercourse with all at

Cranford. Miss Jenkyns, Miss Matty, and Miss Pole had all been to visit

her, and returned with wonderful accounts of her house, her husband, her

dress, and her looks. 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 Jenkyns, that lady was old and feeble, and had lost something of

her strong mind. Little Flora Gordon was staying with the Misses

Jenkyns, and when I came in she was reading aloud to Miss Jenkyns, who

lay feeble and changed on the sofa. Flora put down the _Rambler_ when I

came in.

“Ah!” said Miss Jenkyns, “you find me changed, my dear. 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 Boz, you know—‘Old

Poz’; when I was a girl—but that’s a long time ago—I acted Lucy in ‘Old

Poz.’” She babbled on long enough for Flora to get a good long spell at

the “Christmas Carol,” which Miss Matty had left on the table.