Cranford

The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr Holbrook was dead. Miss Matty heard the news in silence; in fact, from the account of the previous day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept calling upon us for some expression of regret, by asking if it was not sad that he was gone, and saying— “To think of that pleasant day last June, when he seemed so well! And he might have lived this dozen years if he had not gone to that wicked Paris, where they are always having revolutions.” She paused for some demonstration on our part. I saw Miss Matty could not speak, she was trembling so nervously; so I said what I really felt; and after a call of some duration— all the time of which I have no doubt Miss Pole thought Miss Matty received the news very calmly— our visitor took her leave. Miss Matty made a strong effort to conceal her feelings— a concealment she practised even with me, for she has never alluded to Mr Holbrook again, although the book he gave her lies with her Bible on the little table by her bedside. She did not think I heard her when she asked the little milliner of Cranford to make her caps something like the Honourable Mrs Jamieson’s, or that I noticed the reply— “But she wears widows’ caps, ma’am?” “Oh! I only meant something in that style; not widows’, of course, but rather like Mrs Jamieson’s.” This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous motion of head and hands which I have seen ever since in Miss Matty.