I left Miss Matty and Mr Peter most comfortable and contented; the
only subject for regret to the tender heart of the one, and the
social friendly nature of the other, being the unfortunate quarrel
between Mrs Jamieson and the plebeian Hogginses and their
following. In joke, I prophesied one day that this would only last
until Mrs Jamieson or Mr Mulliner were ill, in which case they
would only be too glad to be friends with Mr Hoggins; but Miss
Matty did not like my looking forward to anything like illness in
so light a manner, and before the year was out all had come round
in a far more satisfactory way.
I received two Cranford letters on one auspicious October morning.
Both Miss Pole and Miss Matty wrote to ask me to come over and meet
the Gordons, who had returned to England alive and well with their
two children, now almost grown up. Dear Jessie Brown had kept her
old kind nature, although she had changed her name and station; and
she wrote to say that she and Major Gordon expected to be in
Cranford on the fourteenth, and she hoped and begged to be
remembered to Mrs Jamieson (named first, as became her honourable
station), Miss Pole and Miss Matty--could she ever forget their
kindness to her poor father and sister?--Mrs Forrester, Mr Hoggins
(and here again came in an allusion to kindness shown to the dead
long ago), his new wife, who as such must allow Mrs Gordon to
desire to make her acquaintance, and who was, moreover, an old
Scotch friend of her husband's.
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