Cranford

Arrangements for Samuel Brown’s Cranford Care

It was arranged that Lady Glenmire would hold herself responsible for medical expenses, and she sent Mr Hoggins to examine the patient that very afternoon. Miss Pole volunteered to find lodgings in Cranford should a removal be advisable. When news came that with care and attention the Signor might rally, the whole community rallied to his support: Miss Pole found clean lodgings, Miss Matty sent her sedan-chair, and Mrs Forrester contributed her legendary bread-jelly, bequeathing the recipe in her will to Miss Matty alone.

Cranford’s Supernatural Panic Fades

The great Cranford panic occasioned by the Signor’s first arrival in Turkish dress melted away on his second coming, pale and feeble, attended by his faithful wife and sorrowful little daughter. The realization that the man who had stirred their love of the marvelous lacked the everyday skill to manage a shying horse restored the community’s confidence. Mrs Forrester declared that the headless lady in Darkness Lane could harm only those who neglected good works, though her maid Jenny prudently sewed red flannel crosses into her undergarments. Lady Glenmire playfully observed that the only actual robberies had been stolen apples and missing eggs.

Miss Matty’s Confession of Past Romantic Hope

After Miss Pole’s departure, Miss Matty reflected that she could not in good conscience always warn young people against matrimony, for she remembered when she had looked forward to marriage as eagerly as anyone. Hastily she clarified that she had not thought of any particular person, then confessed that there had been a time when she did not expect to remain Miss Matty Jenkyns all her life. Someone she had once thought to marry had died without ever learning that she had refused him. Now, she said, no one could take his place, though she counted herself very happy with her kind friends. The narrator, knowing of Mr Holbrook, kept silent.