“She has married for an establishment, that’s it.  I suppose she takes the surgery with it,” said Miss Pole, with a little dry laugh at her own joke.  But, like many people who think they have made a severe and sarcastic speech, which yet is clever of its kind, she began to relax in her grimness from the moment when she made this allusion to the surgery; and we turned to speculate on the way in which Mrs Jamieson would receive the news.  The person whom she had left in charge of her house to keep off followers from her maids to set up a follower of her own!  And that follower a man whom Mrs Jamieson had tabooed as vulgar, and inadmissible to Cranford society, not merely on account of his name, but because of his voice, his complexion, his boots, smelling of the stable, and himself, smelling of drugs.  Had he ever been to see Lady Glenmire at Mrs Jamieson’s?  Chloride of lime would not purify the house in its owner’s estimation if he had.  Or had their interviews been confined to the occasional meetings in the chamber of the poor sick conjuror, to whom, with all our sense of the mesalliance, we could not help allowing that they had both been exceedingly kind?  And now it turned out that a servant of Mrs Jamieson’s had been ill, and Mr Hoggins had been attending her for some weeks.  So the wolf had got into the fold, and now he was carrying off the shepherdess.  What would Mrs Jamieson say?  We looked into the darkness of futurity as a child gazes after a rocket up in the cloudy sky, full of wondering expectation of the rattle, the discharge, and the brilliant shower of sparks and light.  Then we brought ourselves down to earth and the present time by questioning each other (being all equally ignorant, and all equally without the slightest data to build any conclusions upon) as to when it would take place?  Where?  How much a year Mr Hoggins had?  Whether she would drop her title?  And how Martha and the other correct servants in Cranford would ever be brought to announce a married couple as Lady Glenmire and Mr Hoggins?  But would they be visited?  Would Mrs Jamieson let us?  Or must we choose between the Honourable Mrs Jamieson and the degraded Lady Glenmire?  We all liked Lady Glenmire the best.  She was bright, and kind, and sociable, and agreeable; and Mrs Jamieson was dull, and inert, and pompous, and tiresome.  But we had acknowledged the sway of the latter so long, that it seemed like a kind of disloyalty now even to meditate disobedience to the prohibition we anticipated.

Mrs Forrester surprised us in our darned caps and patched collars; and we forgot all about them in our eagerness to see how she would bear the information, which we honourably left to Miss Pole, to impart, although, if we had been inclined to take unfair advantage, we might have rushed in ourselves, for she had a most out-of-place fit of coughing for five minutes after Mrs Forrester entered the room.  I shall never forget the imploring expression of her eyes, as she looked at us over her pocket-handkerchief.  They said, as plain as words could speak, “Don’t let Nature deprive me of the treasure which is mine, although for a time I can make no use of it.”  And we did not.