made himself respected
in Cranford, and was called upon, in spite of all resolutions to the
contrary. I was surprised to hear his opinions quoted as authority at
a visit which I paid to Cranford about a year after he had settled in
the town. My own friends had been among the bitterest opponents of any
proposal to visit the captain and his daughters only twelve months
before; and now he was even admitted in the tabooed hours before
twelve. True, it was to discover the cause of a smoking chimney,
before the fire was lighted; but still Captain Brown walked up-stairs,
nothing daunted, spoke in a voice too large for the room, and joked
quite in the way of a tame man about the house. He had been blind to
all the small slights, and omissions of trivial ceremonies, with which
he had been received. He had been friendly, though the Cranford ladies
had been cool; he had answered small sarcastic compliments in good
faith; and with his manly frankness had overpowered all the shrinking
which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor. And at last his
excellent masculine common-sense, and his facility in devising
expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas, had gained him an
extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself
went on in his course, as unaware of his popularity as he had been of
the reverse....

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 honor, and that Captain and the Miss Browns were
invited, I wondered much what would 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 evenings closed in
about four. Candles and clean packs of cards were arranged on 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