ort but herself; how
he had believed her cold and had left in anger; and finally how he had
read of the death of Captain Brown in a foreign newspaper.

Just then Miss Matty burst into the room.

"Oh, Deborah," she said, "there's a gentleman sitting in the drawing-
room with his arm round Miss Jessie's waist!"

"The most proper place for his arm to be in. Go, Matilda, and mind your
own business."

Poor Miss Matty! This was a shock, coming from her decorous sister.

Thus happiness, and with it some of her early bloom, returned to Miss
Jessie, and as Mrs. Gordon her dimples were not out of place.

_III.--Poor Peter_

My visits to Cranford continued for many years, and did not cease even
after the death of Miss Jenkyns.

Miss Matty became my new hostess. At first I rather dreaded the changed
aspect of things. Miss Matty, too, began to cry as soon as she saw me.
She was evidently nervous from having anticipated my visit. I comforted
her as well as I could, and I found the best consolation I could give
was the honest praise that came from my heart as I spoke of the
deceased.

Miss Matty made me her confidante in many matters, and one evening she
sent Martha to go for eggs at a farm at the other end of the town and
told me the story of her brother.

"Poor Peter! The sole honour he brought from Shrewsbury was the
reputation of being captain of the school in the art of practical
joking. He even thought that the people of Cranford might be hoaxed.
'Hoaxing' is not a pretty word, my dear, and I hope you won't tell your
father I used it, for I should not like him to think I was not choice in
my language, after living with such a woman as Deborah. I don't know how
it slipped out of my mouth, except it was that I was thinking of poor
Peter, and it was always his expression.

"One day my father had gone to see some sick people in the village.
Deborah, too, was away from home for a fortnight or so. I don't know
what possessed poor Peter, but he went to her room and dressed himself
in her old gown and shawl and bonnet. And he made the pillow into a
little--you are sure you locked the door, my dear?--into--into a little
baby with white long clothes. And he went and walked up and down in the
Filbert Walk--just half hidden by the rails and half seen; and he
cuddled the pillow just like a baby and talked to it all the nonsense
people do. Oh, dear, and my father came stepping stately up the street,
as he always did, and pus