“I don’t know,” replied Miss Pole.  “Yes, I think I do,” said she, rather briskly; and on seeing Miss Matty look surprised, she added, “You see, one would not like Mrs Jamieson to think that anything she could do, or say, was of consequence enough to give offence; it would be a kind of letting down of ourselves, that I, for one, should not like.  It would be too flattering to Mrs Jamieson if we allowed her to suppose that what she had said affected us a week, nay ten days afterwards.”

“Well!  I suppose it is wrong to be hurt and annoyed so long about anything; and, perhaps, after all, she did not mean to vex us.  But I must say, I could not have brought myself to say the things Mrs Jamieson did about our not calling.  I really don’t think I shall go.”

“Oh, come!  Miss Matty, you must go; you know our friend Mrs Jamieson is much more phlegmatic than most people, and does not enter into the little delicacies of feeling which you possess in so remarkable a degree.”

“I thought you possessed them, too, that day Mrs Jamieson called to tell us not to go,” said Miss Matty innocently.

But Miss Pole, in addition to her delicacies of feeling, possessed a very smart cap, which she was anxious to show to an admiring world; and so she seemed to forget all her angry words uttered not a fortnight before, and to be ready to act on what she called the great Christian principle of “Forgive and forget”; and she lectured dear Miss Matty so long on this head that she absolutely ended by assuring her it was her duty, as a deceased rector’s daughter, to buy a new cap and go to the party at Mrs Jamieson’s.  So “we were most happy to accept,” instead of “regretting that we were obliged to decline.”

The expenditure on dress in Cranford was principally in that one article referred to.  If the heads were buried in smart new caps, the ladies were like ostriches, and cared not what became of their bodies.  Old gowns, white and venerable collars, any number of brooches, up and down and everywhere (some with dogs’ eyes painted in them; some that were like small picture-frames with mausoleums and weeping-willows neatly executed in hair inside; some, again, with miniatures of ladies and gentlemen sweetly smiling out of a nest of stiff muslin), old brooches for a permanent ornament, and new caps to suit the fashion of the day—­the ladies of Cranford always dressed with chaste elegance and propriety, as Miss Barker once prettily expressed it.

And with three new caps, and a greater array of brooches than had ever been seen together at one time since Cranford was a town, did Mrs Forrester, and Miss Matty, and Miss Pole appear on that memorable Tuesday evening.  I counted seven brooches myself on Miss Pole’s dress.  Two were fixed negligently in her cap (one was a butterfly made of Scotch pebbles, which a vivid imagination might believe to be the real insect); one fastened her net neckerchief; one her collar; one ornamented the front of her gown, midway between her throat and waist; and another adorned the point of her stomacher.  Where the seventh was I have forgotten, but it was somewhere about her, I am sure.