ary. I was surprised to hear his opinions quoted
as authority at a visit which I paid to Cranford about a year after he
had settled in the town. My old friends had been among the bitterest
opponents of any proposal to visit the captain and his daughters, only
twelve months before; and now he was even admitted in the tabooed hours
before twelve. True, it was to discover the cause of a smoking chimney,
before the fire was lighted; but still Captain Brown walked upstairs,
nothing daunted, spoke in a voice too large for the room, and joked
quite in the way of a tame man about the house. He had been blind to all
the small slights, and omissions of trivial ceremonies, with which he
had been received. He had been friendly, though the Cranford ladies had
been cool; he had answered small sarcastic compliments in good faith;
and, with his manly frankness, had overpowered all the shrinking which
met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor. And, at last, his
excellent masculine common sense and his facility in devising expedients
to overcome domestic dilemmas had gained him an extraordinary place as
authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself went on in his course as
unaware of his popularity as he had been of the reverse; and I am sure
he was startled one day when he found his advice so highly esteemed as
to make some counsel which he had given in jest to be taken in sober,
serious earnest.

It was on this subject: An old lady had an Alderney cow, which she
looked upon as a daughter. You could not pay the short quarter of an
hour call without being told of the wonderful milk or wonderful
intelligence of this animal. The whole town knew and kindly regarded
Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney; therefore great was the sympathy and
regret when, in an unguarded moment, the poor cow tumbled into a
lime-pit. She moaned so loudly that she was soon heard and rescued; but
meanwhile the poor beast had lost most of her hair and came out looking
naked, cold, and miserable, in a bare skin. Everybody pitied the animal,
though a few could not restrain their smiles at her droll appearance.
Miss Betsy Barker absolutely cried with sorrow and dismay; and it was
said she thought of trying a bath of oil. This remedy, perhaps, was
recommended by some one of the number whose advice she asked; but the
proposal, if ever it was made, was knocked on the head by Captain
Brown's decided "Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers, ma'am,
if you wish to k