Now Jan had received positive commands from that wandering physician not to give his address to chance applicants, the inmates of Chalk Cottage having come in for a special interdiction. Therefore Jan could only decline.
"He is moving about from one place to another," said Jan. "To-day in Switzerland, to-morrow in France; the next day in the moon, for what we can tell. You can give me a letter, and I'll try and get it conveyed to him somehow."
Mrs. Baynton shook her head.
"It would be too late. I thought if I could telegraph to him, he might have got to Liverpool in time to stop Kitty. There's a large migration of Mormons to take place in a day or two, and they are collecting at Liverpool."
"Go and stop her yourself," said Jan sensibly.
"She'd not come back for me," replied Mrs. Baynton, in a depressed tone. "What with her delicate health, and what with her wilfulness, I have always had trouble with her. Dr. West was the only one—But I can't refer to those matters. Flore is broken-hearted. Poor Flore! she has never given me an hour's grief in her life. Kitty has given me little else. And now to go off with the Mormons!"
"Who has she gone with?"
"With the rest from Deerham. They have gone off in the night. That Brother Jarrum and a company of about five-and-twenty, they say."
Jan could scarcely keep from exploding into laughter. Part of Deerham gone off to join the Mormons! "Is it a fact?" cried he.
"It is a fact that they are gone," replied Mrs. Baynton. "She has been out several times in an evening to hear that Brother Jarrum, and had become infected with the Mormon doctrine. In spite of what I or Flore could say, she would go to listen to the man, and she grew to believe the foolish things he uttered. And you can't give me Dr. West's address?"