preferred a washing material; and so on, till we blinded ourselves
to the vulgar fact that we were, all of us, people of very moderate
means. Of course, then, we did not know what to make of a man who
could speak of poverty as if it was not a disgrace. Yet, somehow,
Captain Brown made himself respected in Cranford, and was called
upon, in spite of all resolutions to the contrary. I was surprised
to hear his opinions quoted as authority at a visit which I paid to
Cranford about a year after he had settled in the town. My own
friends had been among the bitterest opponents of any proposal to
visit the Captain and his daughters, only twelve months before; and
now he was even admitted in the tabooed hours before twelve. True,
it was to discover the cause of a smoking chimney, before the fire
was lighted; but still Captain Brown walked upstairs, nothing
daunted, spoke in a voice too large for the room, and joked quite
in the way of a tame man about the house. He had been blind to all
the small slights, and omissions of trivial ceremonies, with which
he had been received. He had been friendly, though the Cranford
ladies had been cool; he had answered small sarcastic compliments
in good faith; and with his manly frankness had overpowered all the
shrinking which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor.
And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense, and his
facility in devising expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas, had
gained him an extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford
ladies. He himself went on in his course, as unaware of his
popularity as he had been of the reverse; and I am sure he was
startled one day when he found his advice so highly esteemed as to
make some counsel which he had given in jest to be taken in sober,
serious earnest.

It was on this subject: An old lady had an Alderney cow, which she