never come. I am seriously annoyed if any
one cuts the string of a parcel, instead of
patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by
fold. How people can bring themselves to
use Indian-rubber rings, which are a sort of
deification of string, as lightly as they do, I
cannot imagine. To me an Indian-rubber
ring is a precious treasure. I have one which
is not new; one that I picked up off the
floor, nearly six years ago. I have really
tried to use it; but my heart failed me, and
I could not commit the extravagance.

Small pieces of butter grieve others. They
cannot attend to conversation, because of
the annoyance occasioned by the habit which
some people have of invariably taking more
butter than they want. Have you not seen
the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which
such persons fix on the article? They would
feel it a relief if they might bury it out of
their sight, by popping it into their own
mouths, and swallowing it down; and they
are really made happy if the person on whose
plate it lies unused, suddenly breaks off a
piece of toast (which he does not want at all)
and eats up his butter. They think that this
is not waste.

Now Miss Matey Jenkyns was chary of
candles. We had many devices to use as
few as possible. In the winter afternoons
she would sit knitting for two or three hours;
she could do this in the dark, or by fire-light;
and, when I asked if I might not ring for
candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she
told me to "keep blind-man's holiday."They
were usually brought in with tea; but we
only burnt one at a time. As we lived in
constant preparation for a friend who might
come in, any evening (but who never did) it
required some contrivance to keep our two
candles of the same length, ready to be
lighted, and to look as if we burnt two
always. The candles took it in turns; and,
whatever we might be talking about or doing,
Miss Matey's eyes were habitually fixed upon
the candle, ready to jump up and extinguish
it, and to light the other before they had
become too uneven in length to be restored
to equality in the course of the evening.

One night, I remember that this candle
economy particularly annoyed me. I had
been very much tired of my compulsory
"blind-man's holiday," especially as Miss
Matey had fallen asleep, and I did not like
to stir the fire, and run the risk of awakening
her; so I could not even sit on the rug, and
scorch myself with sewing by firelight,
according to my usual custom. I fancied Miss
Matey must be dreaming of her early life;
for she spoke one or two words, in her uneasy
sleep, bearing reference to persons who were
dead long before. When Martha brought in
the lighted candle and tea, Miss Matey started
into wakefulness, with a strange bewildered
look around, as if we were not the people she
expected to see about her. There was a little
sad expression that shadowed her face as she
recognised me; but immediately afterwards
she tried to give me her usual smile. All
through tea-time, her talk ran upon the days
of her childhood and youth. Perhaps this
reminded her of the desirableness of looking
over all the old family letters, and destroying
such as ought not to be allowed to fall into
the hands of strangers; for she had often
spoken of the necessity of this task, but had
always shrunk from it, with a timid dread of
something painful. To-night, however, she
rose up after tea, and went for them—in the
dark; for she piqued herself on the precise
neatness of all her chamber arrangements,
and used to look uneasily at me, when I
lighted a bed-candle to go to another room
for anything. When she returned, there was
a faint, pleasant smell of Tonquin beans in
the room. I had always noticed this scent
about any of the things which had belonged
to her mother; and many of the letters were
addressed to her—yellow bundles of
love-letters, sixty or seventy years old.

Miss Matey undid the packet with a sigh;
but she stifled it directly, as if it were
hardly right to regret the flight of time, or
of life either. We agreed to look them over
separately, each taking a different letter out
of the same bundle, and describing its
contents to the other, before destroying it. I
never knew what sad work the reading of
old letters was before that evening, though I
could hardly tell why. The letters were as
happy as letters could be—at least those early
letters were. There was in them a vivid and
intense sense of the present time, which
seemed so strong and full as if it could never
pass away, and as if the warm, living hearts
that so expressed themselves could never die,
and be as nothing to the sunny earth. I
should have felt less melancholy, I believe, if
the letters had been more so. I saw the tears
quietly stealing down the well-worn furrows
of Miss Matey's cheeks, and her spectacles
often wanted wiping. I trusted at last that
she would light the other candle, for my own
eyes were rather dim, and I wanted more
light to see the pale, faded ink; but no even
through her tears, she saw and remembered
her little economical ways.

The earliest set of letters were two bundles
tied together, and ticketed (in Miss Jenkyns's
handwriting), " Letters interchanged between
my ever-honoured father and my
dearly-beloved mother, prior to their marriage, in
July, 1764. "I should guess that the Rector
of Cranford was about twenty-seven years
of age when he wrote those letters; and Miss
Matey told me that her mother was just
eighteen at the time of her wedding. With
my idea of the Rector, derived from a picture
in the dining parlour, stiff and stately, in a huge
full-bottomed wig, with gown, cassock, and
bands, and his hand upon a copy of the only
sermon he ever published,—it was strange to
read these letters. They were full of eager,
passionate ardour; short homely sentences,