“Please, Mr. Gaunt wouldn’t let me come nigh.”
“Why, Dan?”
“I dursn’t tell.”
Cilla came to the gate of the croft. “You’re no coward, Dan. Never say ‘daren’t’ again in my hearing.”
“They’ve fever up at Ghyll,” he said, and turned half about, as if expecting to be driven away.
Priscilla lost her courage, as Dan Foster’s lad had done, but her excuse was cowardice for another. Personal fear she had none; and throughout the long reign of terror, whenever her father had gone in dread of fever at times, Cilla had never yielded to panic. She had met the danger as she had faced the heart-sickness which Gaunt had caused her in the spring; for Cilla’s slimness, the charm which all acknowledged, were made up of strength, not weakness.
“Tell me, Dan—tell me quickly—is it at Ghyll the fever is? It is not Mr. Gaunt who has it? That cannot be, for I saw him only a few hours since.”
“Nay,” the lad answered bluntly. “Mr. Gaunt he hasn’t got it yet, but he’ll have it soon, I reckon. Seems he’s helping up yonder at Ghyll. Said he wouldn’t be home for weeks, he did, and bade me carry a message for him to Marshlands.”
“Lord help us!” broke in Widow Lister’s soft, kittenish voice. “I said ’twould come, an’ what’s a poor widow-body to do if she catches it, and her living all by her lone without chick nor child to help her.”
The widow had a keen scent for disaster. She had seen Dan come down the road with a look of fright, had followed him, and now was standing close to Cilla’s elbow. As of old, her first thought was for herself; that was why, as she stood in the sunlight, no line or wrinkle showed on her babyish face, though other women of her age would have earned such marks of righteousness long since.