Sophia came to meet him. "What is it?" she asked anxiously. "What is the matter, Tom?" The clamour of strident voices, the scolding of the women had preceded him. "Have you seen the clergyman? Why, they are coming here!"
"The deuce they are!" Tom answered. He looked back, and seeing through the trees that the man with the first gang had opened the gate of the orchard, he went to meet him.
"What is it?" he asked. "What are you doing here? Has Sir Hervey sent you?"
"We want no sending!" one of the women cried sharply. "'Tis enough to send us of ourselves."
"Aye, so it is!" a second chimed in with violence. "And do you keep your distance if you be one of them! Let's have no nonsense, master, for we won't stand it!"
"No, no nonsense!" cried another, as the larger party arrived and raised the number to something like a score. "She's got to go, and you with her if you be one of her company! Ain't that so?" the speaker continued, turning to her backers.
"Aye, she must go!" cried one. "We'll ha' no smallpox here!" cried another. "She'll go or swim! Out of the parish, I say!" shrieked a third.
Tom looked along the line of excited faces, faces stupid or cruel; at the best of a low type, and now brutalised by selfish panic. And his heart sank. But for the present he neither blenched nor lost his temper.
"Why, you fools," he said, thinking to reason with them, "don't you know who the lady is?"
"No, nor care!" was the shrill retort. "Nor care, do you understand that?"