CONCLUSION.
I had determined to waive the task of a concluding chapter, leaving to
the reader's imagination the arrangements which must necessarily take
place after Lord Evandale's death. But as I was aware that precedents are
wanting for a practice which might be found convenient both to readers
and compilers, I confess myself to have been in a considerable dilemma,
when fortunately I was honoured with an invitation to drink tea with Miss
Martha Buskbody, a young lady who has carried on the profession of
mantua-making at Ganderscleugh and in the neighbourhood, with great
success, for about forty years. Knowing her taste for narratives of this
description, I requested her to look over the loose sheets the morning
before I waited on her, and enlighten me by the experience which she must
have acquired in reading through the whole stock of three circulating
libraries, in Ganderscleugh and the two next market-towns. When, with a
palpitating heart, I appeared before her in the evening, I found her much
disposed to be complimentary.
"I have not been more affected," said she, wiping the glasses of her
spectacles, "by any novel, excepting the 'Tale of Jemmy and Jenny
Jessamy', which is indeed pathos itself; but your plan of omitting a
formal conclusion will never do.
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