"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 pushing past the crowd saw--I don't know what he saw--but old Clare said his face went grey-white with anger. He seized hold of poor Peter, tore the clothes off his back--bonnet, shawl, gown, and all--threw them among the crowd, and before all the people lifted up his cane and flogged Peter.