not to make the noise very
offensive; but now that she was left alone, she seemed quite horrified
when I begged her to remain with me in the warm dining-parlor, and enjoy
her orange as she liked best. And so it was in every thing. Miss Jenkyns's
rules were made more stringent than ever, because the framer of them was
gone where there could be no appeal. In every thing else Miss Matilda was
meek and undecided to a fault. I have heard Fanny turn her round twenty
times in a morning about dinner, just as the little hussy chose; and I
sometimes fancied she worked on Miss Matilda's weakness, in order to
bewilder her, and to make her feel more in the power of her clever
servant. I determined that I would not leave her till I had seen what sort
of a person Martha was; and, if I found her trustworthy, I would tell her
not to trouble her mistress with every little decision.

Martha was blunt and plain-spoken to a fault; otherwise she was a brisk,
well-meaning, but very ignorant girl. She had not been with us a week
before Miss Matilda and I were astounded one morning by the receipt of a
letter from a cousin of hers, who had been twenty or thirty years in
India, and who had lately, as we had seen by the Army List, returned to
England, bringing with him an invalid wife, who had never been introduced
to her English relations. Major Jenkyns wrote to propose that he and his
wife should spend a night at Cranford, on his way to Scotland--at the inn,
if it did not suit Miss Matilda to receive them into her house; in which
case they should hope to be with her as much as possible during the day.
Of course, it must suit her, as she said; for all Cranford knew that she
had her sister's bedroom at liberty; but I am sure she wished the Major
had stopped in India and forgotten his cousins out and out.

"Oh! how must I manage!" asked she, helplessly. "If Deborah had been
alive, she would have known what to do with a gentleman-visitor. Must I
put razors in his dressing-room? Dear! dear! and I've got none. Deborah
would have had them. And slippers, and coat-brushes?" I suggested that
probably he would bring all these things with him. "And after dinner, how
am I to know when to get up, and leave him to his wine? Deborah would have
done it so well; she would have been quite in her element. Will he want
coffee, do you think?" I undertook the management of the coffee, and told
her I would instruct Martha in the art of waiting, in which it must be
owne