“The lady writ that last night,” said Mrs. Taylor, not waiting to be questioned, but speaking loud and fast and without a pause; “but it warn’t convenient to send it over, for Tom hadn’t come in, and Jim hadn’t just his legs; and ’twas lucky I didn’t, ’cause we did not know what it was, and now it’s all come out red as fire.”
“What has come out? what do you mean?” asked Miss Gritton.
“The small-pox, miss; quite full out—not a place on her face where you could lay a sixpenny bit. It’s very unlucky it’s in my house, but the chay put up in the stables last night, and the man’s a-going to put the horse to—”
“Stop!” exclaimed Isa; “let me understand you. Do you mean to tell me that Miss Madden is lying ill of small-pox in your house?”
“But won’t stop there long—couldn’t think of it. I’ve six children, and I nigh died of small-pox myself these thirty years back, so I know what it be; and it’s a great shame, it is, to come a-sickening in the midst of a family, and get an inn the name of being infected. But she’s a-going at once back to Portal, or on to Axe, afore she’s an hour older.”
“A moment—listen!” cried Isa, interrupting with difficulty the loud incoherent rattle of the landlady; “are you going to send away a lady ill of the small-pox, without so much as knowing where she can find a place of shelter?”
“I guess there be lodgings to be had somewhere; if not at one place at another; they’ll drive about till they find ’un; she can’t stay with me: I’ve a large family, and thirty years back come Michaelmas I—”
Isa Gritton pressed her hand to her forehead, trying to collect her thoughts, distracted by the vociferous talking. A new difficulty had, most unexpectedly, risen before her; a sudden emergency, and—as something seemed to whisper within—a call for the exercise of Christian mercy towards one whom she had regarded as a foe.
The sound of Mrs. Taylor’s loud voice drew Gaspar Gritton out of his room. “Who is here? is anything the matter?” he cried.