Cranford

Planning the Visit to Mrs Forrester’s Anniversary

The ladies turn to the question of whether to accept Mrs Forrester’s invitation to her wedding-day celebration, given the unsafe roads. Mrs Forrester has suggested that one of them use a sedan chair while the others walk briskly beside it to Over Place, a small cluster of houses beyond the dark and lonely lane. Although all would rather decline, they feel loyal to their friend and resolve to keep the appointment.

Travel to Mrs Forrester’s Through Darkness Lane

When the evening arrives, Miss Matty is put into the sedan chair, having extracted promises from the chairmen not to abandon her. She fixes her face into a determined expression and gives the narrator a melancholy look through the glass. The party races through Darkness Lane, arriving safely though out of breath and with Miss Matty considerably jolted.

Sharing Personal Fears at the Gathering

Bolstered by their successful passage through Darkness Lane and eager to prove their candour superior to Mr Hoggins’s, the ladies take turns confessing their private fears. The narrator admits a dread of eyes watching her from flat wooden surfaces and describes turning her looking-glass to the wall. Miss Matty confesses her lifelong terror of something seizing her leg as she climbs into bed, and reveals her ingenious remedy of rolling a penny ball underneath to test the space first.

Mrs Forrester’s Night Watch Arrangements

Mrs Forrester admits that she has hired a boy from a neighbouring cottage, paying his parents in coal and supper, to guard the house at night. She has armed him with the late Major’s sword, instructing him to charge any noise with it drawn. The narrator points out the danger of his attacking the maid Jenny in the dark, but Mrs Forrester reassures her that the boy is a very sound sleeper, heavy suppers being, she suspects, the cause.