Cranford

Peter’s Final Disappearance at Sea

Peter went to sea again during a great war in India—the name of which Miss Matty cannot recall—and the family never heard from him again, leading Miss Matty to believe he is dead though they have never officially mourned him.

Miss Matty’s Hope of Peter’s Return

When sitting alone in the still house, Miss Matty sometimes imagines she hears Peter’s step coming up the street and her heart flutters, but the sound always passes and Peter never returns.

Miss Matty’s Mysterious Street Noise

Miss Matty, going to answer the door, reports hearing a strange noise in the street outside—after hesitation, she identifies it not as talking but as kissing, leaving the mystery unresolved as the chapter ends.

第七章

Miss Betty Barker, daughter of old Mr Jenkyns’s clerk and now a retired milliner, calls upon Miss Matty with a carefully worded invitation to tea, deliberately excluding Mrs Fitz-Adam on the grounds that she is unfit society for Mrs Jamieson and Miss Matilda Jenkyns. The invitation prompts a discussion of Cranford’s social code, including Mrs Forrester’s fond theory that the prefix “Fitz” betokened aristocratic blood, which had eventually allowed the widowed and well-to-do Mrs Fitz-Adam, née Hoggins, to be received by most of the ladies of the town. At the tea itself, the company gathers in calashes and proceeds to Miss Barker’s little dwelling, where the Honourable Mrs Jamieson arrives panting up the stairs with Carlo at her heels, settles into the place of honour, and is soon nodding over a comfortable arm-chair while the four other ladies whisper and nod eagerly over a game of Preference at which Miss Barker, despite professing ignorance of the cards, proceeds to “bast” her opponents most unmercifully.