‘No, I hope it may not be for long. We have been holding a great council against the enemy, and I do hope that we have really done something. No, you need not be afraid, I have not been there again, but we have been routing out the nucleus, and hope we may starve out the fever for want of victims. You never saw such a swarm as we had to turn out. There were twenty-three people to be considered for.’
‘Twenty-three! Have you turned out the whole block?’
‘No, I wish we had; but that would have been seventy-five. This is only from those two tenements with one door!’
‘Impossible!’
‘I should have thought so; but the lawful inhabitants make up sixteen, and there were seven lodgers.’
Mr. Kendal gave a kind of groan, and asked what she had done; she detailed the measures.
‘Twenty-three people in those two houses, and seventy-five in the whole block of building?’
‘Too true. And if you could only see the rooms! The windows that wont open; the roofs that open too much; the dirt on the staircases, and, oh! the horrible smells!’
‘It shall not go on,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘I will look over the place.’
‘Not till the fever is out of it,’ hastily interposed Albinia.