Miss Betty Barker was the daughter of the old clerk at Cranford who had officiated in Mr Jenkyns’s time.  She and her sister had had pretty good situations as ladies’ maids, and had saved money enough to set up a milliner’s shop, which had been patronised by the ladies in the neighbourhood.  Lady Arley, for instance, would occasionally give Miss Barkers the pattern of an old cap of hers, which they immediately copied and circulated among the elite of Cranford.  I say the elite, for Miss Barkers had caught the trick of the place, and piqued themselves upon their “aristocratic connection.”  They would not sell their caps and ribbons to anyone without a pedigree.  Many a farmer’s wife or daughter turned away huffed from Miss Barkers’ select millinery, and went rather to the universal shop, where the profits of brown soap and moist sugar enabled the proprietor to go straight to (Paris, he said, until he found his customers too patriotic and John Bullish to wear what the Mounseers wore) London, where, as he often told his customers, Queen Adelaide had appeared, only the very week before, in a cap exactly like the one he showed them, trimmed with yellow and blue ribbons, and had been complimented by King William on the becoming nature of her head-dress.

Miss Barkers, who confined themselves to truth, and did not approve of miscellaneous customers, throve notwithstanding.  They were self-denying, good people.  Many a time have I seen the eldest of them (she that had been maid to Mrs Jamieson) carrying out some delicate mess to a poor person.  They only aped their betters in having “nothing to do” with the class immediately below theirs.  And when Miss Barker died, their profits and income were found to be such that Miss Betty was justified in shutting up shop and retiring from business.  She also (as I think I have before said) set up her cow; a mark of respectability in Cranford almost as decided as setting up a gig is among some people.  She dressed finer than any lady in Cranford; and we did not wonder at it; for it was understood that she was wearing out all the bonnets and caps and outrageous ribbons which had once formed her stock-in-trade.  It was five or six years since she had given up shop, so in any other place than Cranford her dress might have been considered passee.

And now Miss Betty Barker had called to invite Miss Matty to tea at her house on the following Tuesday.  She gave me also an impromptu invitation, as I happened to be a visitor—­though I could see she had a little fear lest, since my father had gone to live in Drumble, he might have engaged in that “horrid cotton trade,” and so dragged his family down out of “aristocratic society.”  She prefaced this invitation with so many apologies that she quite excited my curiosity.  “Her presumption” was to be excused.  What had she been doing?  She seemed so over-powered by it I could only think that she had been writing to Queen Adelaide to ask for a receipt for washing lace; but the act which