Very little remains to be told.  The approval of the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson set the seal upon the successful career of Miss Matty as a purveyor of tea.  Thus did she escape even the shadow of “vulgarity.”

One afternoon I was sitting in the shop parlour with Miss Matty, when we saw a gentleman go slowly past the window and then stand opposite to the door, as if looking out for the name which we had so carefully hidden.  His clothes had an out-of-the-way foreign cut, and it flashed across me it was the Agra himself!  He entered.

Miss Matty looked at him, and something of tender relaxation in his face struck home to her heart.  She said:  “It is—­oh, sir, can you be Peter?” and trembled from head to foot.  In a moment he had her in his arms, sobbing the tearless cries of old age.

* * * * *

Mary Barton

“Mary Barton,” although not Mrs. Gaskell’s first attempt at authorship, was her first literary success; and although her later writings revealed a gain in skill, subtlety and humour, none of them equalled “Mary Barton” in dramatic intensity and fervent sincerity.  This passionate tale of the sorrows of the Manchester poor, given to the world anonymously in the year 1848, was greeted with a storm of mingled approval and disapproval.  It was praised by Carlyle and Landor, but some critics attacked it fiercely as a slander on the Manchester manufacturers, and there were admirers who complained that it was too heartrending.  The controversy has long since died down, but the book holds a permanent place in literature as a vivid revelation of a dark and painful phase of English life in the middle of the last century.

I.—­Rich and Poor

“Mary,” said John Barton to his daughter, “what’s come o’er thee and Jem Wilson?  You were great friends at one time.”

“Oh, folk say he is going to be married to Molly Gibson,” answered Mary, as indifferently as she could.

“Thou’st played thy cards badly, then,” replied her father in a surly tone.  “At one time he were much fonder o’ thee than thou deservedst.”

“That’s as people think,” said Mary pertly, for she remembered that the very morning before, when on her way to her dressmaking work, she had met Mr. Harry Carson, who had sighed, and sworn and protested all manner of tender vows.  Mr. Harry Carson was the son and the idol of old Mr. Carson, the wealthy mill-owner.  Jem Wilson, her old playmate, and the son of her father’s, closest friend, although he had earned a position of trust at the foundry where he worked, was but a mechanic after all!  Mary was ambitious; she knew that she had beauty; she believed that when young Mr. Carson declared he meant to marry her he spoke the truth.

It so happened that Jem, after much anxious thought, had determined that day to “put his fortune to the touch.”  Just after John Barton had gone out, Jem appeared at the door, looking more awkward and abashed than he had ever done before.