But Daniel Granger did
read his wife's letters, and expected that they should be submitted to him.
It would be impossible to reserve from him any correspondence that came to
her in the common way. So Clarissa, though not given to secrecy, was on
this occasion fain to be secret. After considerable deliberation, she told
her brother to write to her under cover to her maid, Jane Target, at Arden
Court. The girl seemed a good honest girl, and Mrs. Granger believed that
she could trust her.
They went back to Arden a day or two afterwards; and Miss Granger returned
with rapture to her duties as commander-in-chief of the model villagers. No
martinet ever struck more terror into the breasts of rank and file than
did this young lady cause in the simple minds of her prize cottagers,
conscience-stricken by the knowledge that stray cobwebs had flourished
and dust-bins run to seed during her absence. There was not much room for
complaint, however, when she did arrive. The note of warning had been
sounded by the servants of the Court, and there had been a general
scrubbing and cleansing in the habitations of New Arden--that particular
Arden which Mr. Granger had built for himself, and the very bricks whereof
ought to have been stamped with his name and titles, as in the case of
Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon. For a week before
Miss Granger's coming there had been heard the splashing of innumerable
pails of water, and the scrubbing of perpetual scrubbing-brushes; windows
had been polished to the highest degree of transparency; tin tea-kettles
had been sandpapered until they became as silver; there had been quite a
run upon the village chandler for mottled soap and hearthstone.
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