 choice
sorts. And expensive tea is a very favourite luxury with well-to-do tradespeople
and rich farmers' wives, who turn up their noses at the Congou and Souchong
prevalent at many tables of gentility, and will have nothing else than Gunpowder
and Pekoe for themselves.
    But to return to Miss Matty. It was really very pleasant to see how her
unselfishness and simple sense of justice called out the same good qualities in
others. She never seemed to think any one would impose upon her, because she
should be so grieved to do it to them. I have heard her put a stop to the
asseverations of the man who brought her coals by quietly saying, »I am sure you
would be sorry to bring me wrong weight;« and if the coals were short measure
that time, I don't believe they ever were again. People would have felt as much
ashamed of presuming on her good faith as they would have done on that of a
child. But my father says »such simplicity might be very well in Cranford, but
would never do in the world.« And I fancy the world must be very bad, for with
all my father's suspicion of every one with whom he has dealings, and in spite
of all his many precautions, he lost upwards of a thousand pounds by roguery
only last year.
    I just stayed long enough to establish Miss Matty in her new mode of life,
and to pack up the library, which the rector had purchased. He had written a
very kind letter to Miss Matty, saying »how glad he should be to take a library,
so well selected as he knew that the late Mr. Jenkyns's must have been, at any
valuation put upon them.« And when she agreed to this, with a touch of sorrowful
gladness that they would go back to the rectory and be arranged on the
accustomed walls once more, he sent word that he feared that he had not room for
them all, and perhaps Miss Matty would kindly allow him to leave some volumes on
her shelves. But Miss Matty said that she had her Bible and »Johnson's
Dictionary,« and should not have much time for reading, she was afraid; still, I
retained a few books out of consideration for the rector's kindness.
    The money which he had paid, and that produced by the sale, was partly
expended in the stock of tea, and part of it was invested against a rainy day -
i.e., old age or illness. It was but a small sum, it is
