“For anything but feeding and sleeping, and laughing in our faces. Did you ever see an infant sleep so softly? Are not those wheels passing? Yes; surely I heard wheels rolling over the snow.”
She was right. In five minutes more, Margaret had to open the door to her brother.
Hope had arrived at Blickley only just in time to drive Morris up to the door of the Birmingham coach, and put her in as the guard was blowing his horn. Mr Grey’s horse had gone badly, and they had been full late in setting off. He had not liked the prospect of staying where he was till morning, and had resolved to bid defiance to footpads, and return: so he stepped into the coffee-room, and read the papers while the horse was feeding, and came home as quickly after as he could. As he was safe, all the three were glad he had done so; and the more that, for once, Edward seemed sad. They made a bright fire, and gave him tea; but their household offices did not seem to cheer him as usual. Hester asked, at length, whether he had heard any bad news.
“Only public news. The papers are full of everything that is dismal. The epidemic is spreading frightfully. It is a most serious affair. The people you meet in the streets at Blickley look as if they had the plague raging in the town. They say the funerals have never ceased passing through the streets, all this week; and really the churchyard I saw seemed full of new graves. I believe the case is little better in any town in the kingdom.”
“And in the villages?”
“The villages follow, of course, with differences according to their circumstances. None will be worse than this place, when once the fever appears among us. I would not say so anywhere but by our own fireside, because everything should be done to encourage the people instead of frightening them; but indeed it is difficult to imagine a place better prepared for destruction than our pretty village is just now, from the extreme poverty of most of the people, and their ignorance, which renders them unfit to take any rational care of themselves.”
“You say, ‘whenever the fever comes.’ Do you think it must certainly come?”
“Yes: and I have had some suspicions, within a day or two, that it is here already. I must see Walcot to-morrow; and learn what he has discovered in his practice.”
“Mr Walcot! Will not Dr Levitt do as well?”
“I must see Dr Levitt too, to consult about some means of cleansing and drying the worst of the houses in the village. But it is quite necessary that I should have some conversation with Walcot about the methods of treatment of this dreadful disease. If he is not glad of an opportunity of consulting with a brother in the profession, he ought to be—and I have no doubt he will be; for he will very soon have as much upon him as any head and hands in the world could manage.”