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Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
page 69 of 233 (29%)
strangers, who had not known her dear mother, and how good she was,
although she did not always spell, quite in the modern fashion; but
Deborah's letters were so very superior! Any one might profit by
reading them. It was a long time since she had read Mrs Chapone,
but she knew she used to think that Deborah could have said the
same things quite as well; and as for Mrs Carter! people thought a
deal of her letters, just because she had written "Epictetus," but
she was quite sure Deborah would never have made use of such a
common expression as "I canna be fashed!"

Miss Matty did grudge burning these letters, it was evident. She
would not let them be carelessly passed over with any quiet
reading, and skipping, to myself. She took them from me, and even
lighted the second candle in order to read them aloud with a proper
emphasis, and without stumbling over the big words. Oh dear! how I
wanted facts instead of reflections, before those letters were
concluded! They lasted us two nights; and I won't deny that I made
use of the time to think of many other things, and yet I was always
at my post at the end of each sentence.

The rector's letters, and those of his wife and mother-in-law, had
all been tolerably short and pithy, written in a straight hand,
with the lines very close together. Sometimes the whole letter was
contained on a mere scrap of paper. The paper was very yellow, and
the ink very brown; some of the sheets were (as Miss Matty made me
observe) the old original post, with the stamp in the corner
representing a post-boy riding for life and twanging his horn. The
letters of Mrs Jenkyns and her mother were fastened with a great
round red wafer; for it was before Miss Edgeworth's "patronage" had
banished wafers from polite society. It was evident, from the
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