Mr Holbrook’s Death
Miss Pole returns the next day with news that Mr Holbrook has died. Miss Matty receives the report in trembling silence, and the narrator, seeing her unable to speak, supplies the expected expressions of regret. Miss Pole, deceived by the calm exterior, takes her leave after a call of some duration.
Miss Matty’s Quiet Grief
Miss Matty makes a strong effort to conceal her grief, never once alluding again to Mr Holbrook in the narrator’s presence. The book he gave her, however, lies beside her Bible on the bedside table, a silent witness to her loss.
Widow-Style Caps
In secret, Miss Matty asks the Cranford milliner to make her caps in the style of the Honourable Mrs Jamieson’s. When the milliner observes that Mrs Jamieson wears widows’ caps, Miss Matty hastily disclaims any such intention. The narrator, who has noticed this exchange, recognizes it as the beginning of Miss Matty’s tremulous head-and-hand motion, the physical mark of a grief she will not name.
Miss Matty Relents on Followers
On the evening of the day they learned of Holbrook’s death, Miss Matty, silent and thoughtful through prayers, calls Martha back. She tells the young woman she may, if she meets a respectable young man she likes, receive him as a visitor once a week, adding in a low voice, “God forbid! that I should grieve any young hearts,” as though providing against some distant contingency.
Jem Hearn Approved
Martha, ready and eager, immediately names Jem Hearn—a joiner earning three-and-sixpence a day and standing six foot one in his stocking-feet—promising that anyone will vouch for his steadiness and that he would gladly come the very next night. Startled by this ready-made suitor, Miss Matty nonetheless submits to Fate and Love.
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