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"I was coming to you this afternoon," added the Englishman, taking the outstretched hand, eagerly, "to tell you that I am merely Viscount Cranford and not Lord Vernon a very insignificant fellow, not a great one and to ask for your daughter, Miss Nell. I ask you now. Though first let me make it clear to you that the title is of little importance."
Captain Brown had taken a small house on the outskirts of the town, where he lived with his two daughters. He must have been upwards of sixty at the time of the first visit I paid to Cranford after I had left it as a residence. But he had a wiry, well-trained, elastic figure, a stiff military throw-back of his head, and a springing step, which made him appear much younger than he was.
In short, Miss Matty was charmed with the plan, and said that to- morrow Cranford would remind her of the Preston Guild, to which she had been in her youth a luncheon at the "George," with the dear Gordons, and the signor in the Assembly Room in the evening. But I I looked only at the fatal words:
In March 1864 I received a letter from my friend De la Rue, dated from his observatory at Cranford, Middlesex, in which he said: "I like good honest doubting. Before I had seen with my own eyes your willow leaves, I doubted their real existence, but I did not doubt your having seen what you had drawn.
The tradition in English fiction, which is most signally marked by "Pride and Prejudice," "Cranford," and "Barchester Towers," and which was so pleasantly continued by the late Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and by Margaret Deland, is admirably embodied in the work of this writer, whose work should be better known. The quiet blending of humor and pathos in "Miss Fothergill" is unusual.
She dressed finer than any lady in Cranford; and we did not wonder at it; for it was understood that she was wearing out all the bonnets and caps and outrageous ribbons which had once formed her stock-in-trade. It was five or six years since she had given up shop, so in any other place than Cranford her dress might have been considered passee.
There was quick work and heart-breaking to be done, and, for the first few critical minutes, a terrible lack of hands to do it. Cranford, the engineer, was still in his cab, pinned down by the coal which had shifted forward at the shock of the sudden stop.
I had just read 'Cranford, and the story of life in that simple little village seemed so charming to me that I wished with all my heart I could step into the book and be one of the characters, and meet all the people that lived between its covers. Then I heard some one say that there were more interesting happenings and queer characters in Lloydsboro Valley than in Cranford.
I expected you to put your finger in your mouth the next thing, and stand as if you had never seen anybody. And Daisy Randolph! the heiress of Melbourne and Cranford!" The heiress of Melbourne and Cranford lifted to her aunt's face a look strangely in contrast with the look bent on her; so much worldly wisdom was in the one, so much want of it in the other.
"And besides, it was only fun, learning. Smithy was right when he said this Boy Scout business was the best thing ever started in this or any other country to benefit fellows. And I'm glad I had that idea of starting a troop in sleepy old Cranford, so far behind the times." Just then he happened to remember that he was not alone on the island.
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