We were all of us far too full of the signor’s precarious state to talk either about robbers or ghosts.  Indeed, Lady Glenmire said she never had heard of any actual robberies, except that two little boys had stolen some apples from Farmer Benson’s orchard, and that some eggs had been missed on a market-day off Widow Hayward’s stall.  But that was expecting too much of us; we could not acknowledge that we had only had this small foundation for all our panic.  Miss Pole drew herself up at this remark of Lady Glenmire’s, and said “that she wished she could agree with her as to the very small reason we had had for alarm, but with the recollection of a man disguised as a woman who had endeavoured to force himself into her house while his confederates waited outside; with the knowledge gained from Lady Glenmire herself, of the footprints seen on Mrs Jamieson’s flower borders; with the fact before her of the audacious robbery committed on Mr Hoggins at his own door”—­But here Lady Glenmire broke in with a very strong expression of doubt as to whether this last story was not an entire fabrication founded upon the theft of a cat; she grew so red while she was saying all this that I was not surprised at Miss Pole’s manner of bridling up, and I am certain, if Lady Glenmire had not been “her ladyship,” we should have had a more emphatic contradiction than the “Well, to be sure!” and similar fragmentary ejaculations, which were all that she ventured upon in my lady’s presence.  But when she was gone Miss Pole began a long congratulation to Miss Matty that so far they had escaped marriage, which she noticed always made people credulous to the last degree; indeed, she thought it argued great natural credulity in a woman if she could not keep herself from being married; and in what Lady Glenmire had said about Mr Hoggins’s robbery we had a specimen of what people came to if they gave way to such a weakness; evidently Lady Glenmire would swallow anything if she could believe the poor vamped-up story about a neck of mutton and a pussy with which he had tried to impose on Miss Pole, only she had always been on her guard against believing too much of what men said.

We were thankful, as Miss Pole desired us to be, that we had never been married; but I think, of the two, we were even more thankful that the robbers had left Cranford; at least I judge so from a speech of Miss Matty’s that evening, as we sat over the fire, in which she evidently looked upon a husband as a great protector against thieves, burglars, and ghosts; and said that she did not think that she should dare to be always warning young people against matrimony, as Miss Pole did continually; to be sure, marriage was a risk, as she saw, now she had had some experience; but she remembered the time when she had looked forward to being married as much as any one.

“Not to any particular person, my dear,” said she, hastily checking herself up, as if she were afraid of having admitted too much; “only the old story, you know, of ladies always saying, ’when I marry,’ and gentlemen, ‘if I marry.’” It was a joke spoken in rather a sad tone, and I doubt if either of us smiled; but I could not see Miss Matty’s face by the flickering fire-light.  In a little while she continued —