“‘Tis true, mum, I seed it myself.  The captain was a-readin’ some book, waitin’ for the down train, when a lass as gave its sister the slip came toddling across the line.  He looked up sudden, see’d the child, darted on the line, cotched it up, and his foot slipped and the train came over him in no time.  The child’s safe.  Poor captain would be glad of that, mum, wouldn’t he?  God bless him!”

The great rough carter turned away to hide his tears.  I turned to Miss Jenkyns.  She looked very ill, as though she were going to faint, and signed to me to open a window.

“Matilda, bring me my bonnet.  I must go to those girls.  God pardon me if ever I have spoken contemptuously to the captain.”

Miss Brown did not long survive her father.  Her last words were a prayer for forgiveness for her selfishness in allowing her sister Jessie to sacrifice herself for her all her life.

But Miss Jessie was not long left alone.  Miss Jenkyns insisted she should come and stay with her, and would not hear of her going out into the world to earn her living as a saleswoman.  “Some people have no idea of their rank as a captain’s daughter,” she related indignantly, and stumped out of the room.  Presently she came back with a strange look on her face.

“I have been much startled—­no, I’ve not been startled—­don’t mind me, my dear Miss Jessie, only surprised—­in fact, I’ve had a caller whom you once knew, my dear Miss Jessie.”

Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed scarlet.

“Is it?—­it is not——­” stammered out Miss Jessie, and got no farther.

“This is his card,” said Miss Jenkyns, and went through a series of winks and odd faces at me, and formed a long sentence with her lips, of which I could not understand a word.

Major Gordon was shown upstairs.

While downstairs Miss Jenkyns told me what the major had told her.  How he had served in the same regiment as Captain Brown and had fallen in love with Miss Jessie, then a sweet-looking, blooming girl of eighteen; how she had refused him, though obviously not indifferent to him; how he had discovered the obstacle to be the fell disease which had stricken her sister, whom there was no one to nurse and comfort 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.