“He tells us, what I suppose you hear from Mr Grey, that the fever seems to be spreading everywhere, and is just now very destructive at Buckley. Does not Mr Grey tell you so?”
“No, indeed; there is no learning anything from Mr Grey that he does not like to tell. Sophia, I think we must take in a newspaper again, that we may stand a chance of knowing something.”
Sophia agreed.
“Sophia and I found that we really had no time to read the newspaper. There it lay, and nobody touched it; for Mr Grey reads the news in the office always. I told Mr Grey it was just paying so much a-week for no good to anybody, and I begged he would countermand the paper. But we must take it in again, really, to know how this fever goes on. Does Mr Hope think, my dears, as many people are saying here this morning, that it is a sort of plague?”
“Oh, mamma,” exclaimed Sophia, “how can you say anything so dreadful?”
“I have not heard my husband speak of it so,” said Hester. “He thinks it a very serious affair, happening as it does in the midst of a scarcity, when the poor are already depressed and sickly.”
“Ah! that is always the way, Mr Grey tells me. After a scarcity comes the fever, he says. The poor are much to be pitied indeed. But what should those do who are not poor, have you heard Mr Hope say?”
“He thinks they should help their poor neighbours to the very utmost.”
“Oh, yes; of course: but what I mean is, what precautions would be advise?”
“We will ask him. I have not heard him speak particularly of this on the present occasion.”