“We took it to my father in the hopes it would rouse him, for he had sat with her hand in his all night long.  At first he took no notice of it.  Then suddenly he got up and spoke.  ‘She shall be buried in it,’ he said.  ‘Peter shall have that comfort; and she would have liked it.’”

“Did Mr. Peter ever come home?”

“Yes, once.  He came home a lieutenant.  And he and my father were such friends.  My father was so proud to show him to all the neighbours.  He never walked out without Peter’s arm to lean on.  And then Peter went to sea again, and by-and-by my father died, blessing us both and thanking Deborah for all she had been to him.  And our circumstances were changed, and from a big rectory with three servants we had come down to a small house with a servant-of-all-work.  But, as Deborah used to say, we have always lived genteelly, even if circumstances have compelled us to simplicity.  Poor Deborah!”

“And Mr. Peter?” I asked.

“Oh, there was some great war in India, and we have never heard of Peter since then.  I believe he is dead myself.  Sometimes when I sit by myself and the house is quiet, I think I hear his step coming up the street, and my heart begins to flutter and beat; but the sound goes, and Peter never comes back.”

IV.—­Friends in Need

The years rolled on.  I spent my time between Drumble and Cranford.  I was thankful that I happened to be staying with Miss Matty when the Town and County Bank failed, which had such a disastrous effect on her little fortune.

It was an example to me, and I fancy it might be to many others, to see how immediately Miss Matty set about the retrenchment she knew to be right under her altered circumstances.  I did the little I could.  Some months back a conjuror had given a performance in the Cranford Assembly Rooms.  By a strange set of circumstances the identity of Signor Brunoni was revealed.  He was plain Samuel Brown, who had fallen out of his cart and had to be attended by our doctor.  I went to visit the patient and his wife, and learned that she had been India.  She told me a long story about being befriended, after a perilous journey, by a kind Englishman who lived right in the midst of the natives.  It was his name which astonished me.  Agra Jenkyns.

Could Agra Jenkyns be the long lost Peter?  I resolved to say nothing to Miss Matty, but got the address from the signor (as we still called him from habit), spelt by sound, and very queer it looked, and posted a letter to him.

All sorts of plans were discussed for Miss Matty’s future.  I thought of all the things by which a woman, past middle age, and with the education common to ladies fifty years ago, could earn or add to a living without materially losing caste; but at length I put even this last clause on one side, and wondered what in the world Miss Matty could do.  Even teaching was out of the question, for, reckoning over her accomplishments, I had to come down to reading, writing, and arithmetic—­and in reading the chapter every morning she always coughed before coming to long words.