“To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb That crossed the platter as she laid it down,”
and to suit the action to the word—an audacious liberty for which, I feel bound to report, he was _not_ duly reprimanded.
As no topic of conversation seemed to occur to any one, and as we were, all four, on those delightful terms with one another (the only terms, I think, on which any friendship, that deserves the name of _intimacy_, can be maintained) which involve no sort of necessity for _speaking_ for mere speaking’s sake, we sat in silence for some minutes.
At length I broke the silence by asking “Is there any fresh news from the harbour about the Fever?”
“None since this morning,” the Earl said, looking very grave. “But that was alarming enough. The Fever is spreading fast: the London doctor has taken fright and left the place, and the only one now available isn’t a regular doctor at all: he is apothecary, and doctor, and dentist, and I don’t know what other trades, all in one. It’s a bad outlook for those poor fishermen—and a worse one for all the women and children.”
“How many are there of them altogether?” Arthur asked.
“There were nearly one hundred, a week ago.” said the Earl: “but there have been twenty or thirty deaths since then.”
“And what religious ministrations are there to be had?”
“There are three brave men down there,” the Earl replied, his voice trembling with emotion, “gallant heroes as ever won the Victoria Cross! I am certain that no one of the three will ever leave the place merely to save his own life. There’s the Curate: his wife is with him: they have no children. Then there’s the Roman Catholic Priest. And there’s the Wesleyan Minister. They go amongst their own flocks, mostly; but I’m told that those who are dying like to have _any_ of the three with them. How slight the barriers seem to be that part Christian from Christian, when one has to deal with the great facts of Life and the reality of Death!”
“So it must be, and so it should be——” Arthur was beginning, when the front-door bell rang, suddenly and violently.
We heard the front-door hastily opened, and voices outside: then a knock at the door of the smoking-room, and the old house-keeper appeared, looking a little scared.