'
"Well, perhaps it was not reasonable, but what could we do or say?
One gives people in grief their own way. He took it up and felt
it: 'It is just such a shawl as she wished for when she was
married, and her mother did not give it her. I did not know of it
till after, or she should have had it--she should; but she shall
have it now.'
"My mother looked so lovely in her death! She was always pretty,
and now she looked fair, and waxen, and young--younger than
Deborah, as she stood trembling and shivering by her. We decked
her in the long soft folds; she lay smiling, as if pleased; and
people came--all Cranford came--to beg to see her, for they had
loved her dearly, as well they might; and the countrywomen brought
posies; old Clare's wife brought some white violets and begged they
might lie on her breast.
"Deborah said to me, the day of my mother's funeral, that if she
had a hundred offers she never would marry and leave my father. It
was not very likely she would have so many--I don't know that she
had one; but it was not less to her credit to say so. She was such
a daughter to my father as I think there never was before or since.
His eyes failed him, and she read book after book, and wrote, and
copied, and was always at his service in any parish business.
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