‘No wonder you have typhus here,’ said Lancelot, ‘with this filthy open drain running right before the door. Why can’t you clean it out?’
‘Why, what harm does that do?’ answered the woman, peevishly. ‘Besides, here’s my master gets up to his work by five in the morning, and not back till seven at night, and by then he ain’t in no humour to clean out gutters. And where’s the water to come from to keep a place clean? It costs many a one of us here a shilling a week the summer through to pay fetching water up the hill. We’ve work enough to fill our kettles. The muck must just lie in the road, smell or none, till the rain carries it away.’
Lancelot sighed again.
‘It would be a good thing for Ashy, Tregarva, if the weir-pool did, some fine morning, run up to Ashy Down, as poor Harry Verney said on his deathbed.’
‘There won’t be much of Ashy left by that time, sir, if the landlords go on pulling down cottages at their present rate; driving the people into the towns, to herd together there like hogs, and walk out to their work four or five miles every morning.’
‘Why,’ said Lancelot, ‘wherever one goes one sees commodious new cottages springing up.’
‘Wherever you go, sir; but what of wherever you don’t go? Along the roadsides, and round the gentlemen’s parks, where the cottages are in sight, it’s all very smart; but just go into the outlying hamlets—a whited sepulchre, sir, is many a great estate; outwardly swept and garnished, and inwardly full of all uncleanliness, and dead men’s bones.’
At this moment two cloaked and veiled figures came up to the door, followed by a servant. There was no mistaking those delicate footsteps, and the two young men drew back with fluttering hearts, and breathed out silent blessings on the ministering angels, as they entered the crazy and reeking house.
‘I’m thinking, sir,’ said Tregarva, as they walked slowly and reluctantly away, ‘that it is hard of the gentlemen to leave all God’s work to the ladies, as nine-tenths of them do.’
‘And I am thinking, Tregarva, that both for ladies and gentlemen, prevention is better than cure.’