Miss Jenkyns’s rules were made more stringent than ever, because the framer of them was gone where there could be no appeal.  In all things 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 owned she was terribly deficient—­and that I had no doubt Major and Mrs Jenkyns would understand the quiet mode in which a lady lived by herself in a country town.  But she was sadly fluttered.  I made her empty her decanters and bring up two fresh bottles of wine.  I wished I could have prevented her from being present at my instructions to Martha, for she frequently cut in with some fresh direction, muddling the poor girl’s mind as she stood open-mouthed, listening to us both.

“Hand the vegetables round,” said I (foolishly, I see now—­for it was aiming at more than we could accomplish with quietness and simplicity); and then, seeing her look bewildered, I added, “take the vegetables round to people, and let them help themselves.”