"The nurses are here?" said Faversham after a pause.
"Aye," said the shepherd, turning toward his cottage, "but they can do nowt. The childer are marked for deein afore they're sick." And he walked away, his inner mind shaken with a passion that forbade him to stay and talk with Melrose's agent.
Two or three labourers who were lounging in front of their houses came slowly toward the agent. It was evident that there was unemployment as well as disease in the village, and that the neighbouring farms, where there were young children, were cutting themselves off, as much as they could, from the Mainstairs infection, by dismissing the Mainstairs men.
Faversham meanwhile again implored Lydia to go home. "This whole place reeks with infection. You ought not to be here."
"They say that nothing has been done!"
Her tone was quiet, but her look pierced.
"I tried. It was impossible. The only thing that could be done was that the people should go. They are under notice. Every single person is here in defiance of the law. The police will have to be called in."
"And where are we to goa, sir!" cried one of the men who had come up. "Theer's noa house to be had nearer than Pengarth—yo' know that yoursen—an' how are we to be waakin' fower mile to our work i' t' mornin', an' fower mile back i' t' evening? Why, we havena got t' strength! It isna exactly a health resort—yo' ken—Mainstairs!"
"I'll tell yo' where soom on us might goa, Muster Faversham," said another older man, removing the pipe he had been stolidly smoking; "theer's two farmhouses o' Melrose's, within half a mile o' this place—shut oop—noabody there. They're big houses—yan o' them wor an' owd manor-house, years agone. A body might put oop five or six families in 'em at a pinch. Thattens might dëa for a beginnin'; while soom o' these houses were coomin' doon."
Lydia turned eagerly to Faversham.