The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

The preparations were much as usual. Card-tables, with green baize tops, were set out by daylight, and towards four, when the evening closed in, we all stood dressed in our best, each with a candle-lighter in our hand, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knock came. The china was delicate egg-shell; the old-fashioned silver glittered with polishing; but the eatables were of the slightest description. While the trays were yet on the table, Captain Brown arrived with his two daughters, Miss Brown and Miss Jessie, the former with a sickly, pained, and careworn expression; the latter with a pretty, round, dimpled face, and the look of a child which will remain with her should she live to be a hundred.

I could see that the captain was a favourite with all the ladies present. Ruffled brows were smoothed and sharp voices hushed at his approach. He immediately and quietly assumed the man's place in the room; attended to everyone's wants, lessened the pretty maidservant's labour by waiting on empty cups and bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a true man throughout.

The party passed off very well in spite of one or two little hitches. One was Miss Jessie Brown's unguarded admission--à propos of Shetland wool--that she had an uncle, her mother's brother, who was a shopkeeper in Edinburgh. Miss Jenkyns tried to drown this confession by a terrible cough, for the honourable Mrs. Jamieson was sitting at the card-table nearest Miss Jessie, and what would she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with a shopkeeper's niece!

Then there was a slight breeze between Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown over the relative merits of Dr. Johnson and the author of "Pickwick Papers"--then being published in parts--as writers of light and agreeable fiction. Captain Brown read an account of the "Swarry" which Sam Weller gave at Bath. Some of us laughed very heartily. I did not dare, because I was staying in the house. At the conclusion Miss Jenkyns said to me, with mild dignity, "Fetch me 'Rasselas,' my dear, out of the book-room."

After delivering one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac in a majestic, high-pitched voice, Miss Jenkyns said, "I imagine I am now justified in my preference for Dr. Johnson over your Mr. Boz as a writer of fiction."

The captain said nothing, merely screwed his lips up and drummed on the table; but when Miss Jenkyns returned later to the charge and recommended the doctor's style to Captain Brown's favourite, the captain replied, "I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such pompous writing."

Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront in a way of which the captain had not dreamed. How could he know that she and her friends looked upon epistolary writing as their forte, and that when in a letter they "seized the half-hour just previous to post-time to assure" their friends of this and that, they were using the doctor as a model?

As it was Miss Jenkyns refused to be mollified by Captain Brown's efforts later to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing subject. She was inexorable.

Captain Brown endeavoured to make peace after this memorable dispute by a present to Miss Jenkyns 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 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 affairs at the time when I left Cranford and went to Drumble. I had, however, several correspondents who kept me au fait as to the proceedings of the inhabitants of the dear little town.

II.--The Captain

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 near the same well-preserved, old-fashioned clothes. The greatest event was that the Misses 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 windows! We spread our 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 in a fresh spot; and down again we went on our knees to alter the position of the newspapers. One whole morning, too, we spent in cutting out and stitching together pieces of newspapers so as to form little paths to every chair, lest the shoes of visitors should defile the purity of the carpet. Do you make paper paths for every guest to walk upon in London?