“Will you let me tell you first, Dame Rogers, what Doctor Newton said to my father? Fear, he said, made us feeble, so that, when the evil came, we could but sink, like as straw sinks before a flame, and could not resist; but when we were bold, and of good hope, alway having a strong confidence in Him who can kill and make alive, and waiting what he shall send, that then the pestilence had less might, and there was liker to come deliverance. Wherefore I pray you, good dame, have courage and hope, and remember how mighty He is, who doth save us.”
“I thank thee, Mistress Edith,” murmured Dame Rogers.
“It is Phœbe Turner,” continued Edith; “I remember she was wont to have fair hair, and a merry face, and was something of your years, Mercy; is it not so?”
“Nay, Mistress Edith,” said Dame Rogers, eagerly, “she’s a good five year older than my Mercy, I warrant you. It’s nineteen year—ay, nineteen year come Lammastide, since Dame Turner died (and she was an old woman then to have young children), and my Mercy is but sixteen.”
“But Mistress Edith hath not seen them, mother,” said Mercy, apologetically, “since she went away from Hampstead, and Phœbe hath been with the great lady in Westminster, I know not how many years. Alas, poor Phœbe! they say she came home but yestermorning, and she had gotten the plague before she came; and now they be all shut up with her, and Dame Saffron says they are sure to die, for Ralph Tennison is watching by the door, and no one dare go out or come in, and all of them sound but she, shut in with the plague!”
And Mercy sat down in renewed terror and sorrow, and began to weep. Dame Rogers would fain have joined her, but the awe of Edith’s presence and command restrained the weakness. Edith was burning a handful of perfumes, and sprinkling her own dress and Mercy’s with vinegar, the little commotion made by this, diverted the anxious dame from her brooding, and roused her to prepare necessary refreshment for her two youthful heroes—her own Mercy, alas! being by this time, an exceedingly timid and wavering one.
While she was thus employed, some one knocked at the door. Mercy and her mother started in fear. Edith went cautiously to open it.
The rich dress of the person who stood without; the sudden doffing of his bonnet, the long plumes of which swept over Dame Rogers’s budding roses, as its owner bowed low and reverently to the young Puritan, standing in her nun-like simplicity of apparel within, bewildered her for a moment. Then she recognized Sir Philip Dacre, the companion of their journey from Cumberland, and gravely bade him enter. Her father, for whom he asked, she expected very soon.
Dame Rogers withdrew herself and her daughter into another apartment in jealous fear.
“Save us! one knows not where the cavalier may have been—and an he be a lord, he might carry the pestilence as ready as a serving-man. Get thee to thy chamber, Mercy; if he is known to Mistress Edith she must even take the peril to herself.”