I wondered what the Cranford ladies did with Captain Brown at their parties.  We had often rejoiced, in former days, that there was no gentleman to be attended to, and to find conversation for, at the card-parties.  We had congratulated ourselves upon the snugness of the evenings; and, in our love for gentility, and distaste of mankind, we had almost persuaded ourselves that to be a man was to be “vulgar”; so that when I found my friend and hostess, Miss Jenkyns, was going to have a party in my honour, and that Captain and the Miss Browns were invited, I wondered much what could be the course of the evening.  Card-tables, with green-baize tops were set out by daylight, just as usual; it was the third week in November, so the evening closed in about four.  Candles, and clean packs of cards were arranged in each table.  The fire was made up; the neat maid-servant had received her last directions; and there we stood, dressed in our best, each with a candle-lighter in our hands, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knock came.  Parties in Cranford were solemn festivities, making the ladies feel gravely elated as they sat together in their best dresses.  As soon as three had arrived, we sat down to “Preference,” I being the unlucky fourth.  The next four comers were put down immediately to another table; and presently the tea-trays, which I had seen set out in the storeroom as I passed in the morning, were placed each on the middle of a card-table.  The china was delicate eggshell; the old-fashioned silver glittered with polishing; but the eatables were of the slightest description.  While the trays were yet on the tables, Captain and the Miss Browns came in; and I could see that, somehow or other, the captain was a favourite with all the ladies present.  Ruffled brows were smoothed, sharp voices lowered at his approach.  Miss Brown looked ill, and depressed almost to gloom.  Miss Jessie smiled as usual, and seemed nearly as popular as her father.  He immediately and quietly assumed the man’s place in the room; attended to every one’s wants, lessened the pretty maid-servant’s labour by waiting on empty cups and bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet did it all in so dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a true man throughout.  He played for threepenny points with as grave an interest as if they had been pounds; and yet, in all his attention to strangers, he had an eye on his suffering daughter—­for suffering I was sure she was, though to many eyes she might only appear to be irritable.  Miss Jessie could not play cards; but she talked to the sitters-out, who, before her coming, had been rather inclined to be cross.  She sang, too, to an old cracked piano, which I think had been a spinet in its youth.  Miss Jessie sang “Jock of Hazeldean” a little out of tune; but we were none of us musical, though Miss Jenkyns beat time, out of time, by way of appearing to be so.