“Well, sir, I am not a bird of happy omen.”
The rector blew his nose and flapped his scarlet handkerchief in the air.
“What evil tidings am I to hear?” asked Jeffray, smiling.
“Just this, sir, that the small-pox is said to be in Rodenham.”
“The small-pox, Sugg!”
“A bad business, Mr. Richard, for we have been free of the plague these many years. I refer to the plague, sir, and not to the Methodists.”
“How was it brought into the village?”
“By a peddler fellow from Lewes, I have heard. He had an attic at the Wheat Sheaf for a night, and George Gogg’s girl, Kate, has sickened with what Surgeon Stott says is the yellow-pox, and I suppose he knows. Where it will end, sir, God only can tell.”
Richard was no coward, but he looked grave enough over Dr. Sugg’s tidings. He knew that the disease was Death’s right-hand man in England, and that there were more folk who were scarred than there were folk who had gone free. High and low dreaded the scourge; the toper went white over his punch-bowl; madam in her perfumed boudoir shivered at the thought of the marring of her face.
“What is being done?” he asked, quietly.