too. It will be a terrible come down for poor Lily, with the loss of her fine husband and all.'
After dinner, when Mr Boyce had again gone forth upon his labours, the same subject was discussed between Mrs Boyce and her daughters, and the mother was very careful to teach her children that Mrs Dale would be just as good a person as ever she had been, and quite as much a lady, even though she should live in a very dingy house at Guestwick; from which lesson the Boyce girls learned plainly that Mrs Dale, with Bell and Lily, were about to have a fall in the world, and that they were to be treated accordingly.
From all this, it will be discovered that Mrs Dale had not given way to the squire's arguments, although she had found herself unable to answer them. As she had returned home she had felt herself to be almost vanquished, and had spoken to the girls with the air and tone of a woman who hardly knew in which course lay the line of her duty. But they had not seen the squire's manner on the occasion, nor heard his words, and they could not understand that their own purpose should be abandoned because he did not like it. So they talked their mother into fresh resolves, and on the following morning she wrote a note to her brother-in-law, assuring him that she had thought much of all that he had said, but again declaring that she regarded herself as bound in duty to leave the Small House. To this he had returned no answer, and she had communicated her intention to Mrs Hearn, thinking it better that there should be no secret in the matter.
'I am sorry to hear that your sister-in-law is going to leave us,' Mr Boyce said to the squire that same afternoon.
'Who told you that?' asked the squire, showing by his tone that he by no means liked the topic of conversation which the parson had chosen.
'Well, I had it from Mrs Boyce, and I think Mrs Hearn told her.'
'I wish Mrs Hearn would mind her own business, and not spread idle reports.'
The squire said nothing more, and Mr Boyce felt that he had been very unjustly snubbed.
Dr Crofts had come over and pronounced as a fact that it was scarlatina. Village apothecaries are generally wronged by the doubts which are thrown upon them, for the town doctors when they come always confirm what the village apothecaries have said.
'There can be no doubt as to its being scarlatina,' the doctor declared; 'but the symptoms are all favourable.'
There was, however, much worse coming than this. Two days afterwards Lily found herself to be rather unwell. She endeavoured to keep it to herself, fearing that she should be brought under the doctor's notice as a patient; but her efforts were unavailing, and on the following morning it was known that she had also taken the disease. Dr Crofts declared that everything was in her favour. The weather was cold. The presence of the malady in the house had caused them all to be careful, and, moreover, good advice was at hand at once. The doctor begged Mrs Dale not to be uneasy, but he was very eager in begging that the two sisters might not be allowed to be together. 'Could you not send Bell into Guestwick,—to Mrs Eames's?' said he. But Bell did not choose to be sent to Mrs Eames's, and was with great difficulty kept out of her mother's bedroom, to which Lily as an invalid was transferred.
'If you will allow me to say so,' he said to Bell, on the second day after Lily's complaint had declared itself, 'you are wrong to stay here in the house.'
'I certainly shall not leave mamma, when she has got so much upon her hands,' said Bell.
'But if you should be taken ill she would have more on her hands,' pleaded the doctor.
'I could not do it,' Bell replied. 'If I were taken over to Guestwick, I should be so uneasy that I should walk back to Allington the first moment that I could escape from the house.'
'I think your mother would be more comfortable without you.'
'And I think she would be more comfortable with me. I don't ever like to hear of a woman running away from illness; but when a sister or a daughter does so, it is intolerable.' So Bell remained, without permission indeed to see her sister, but performing various outside administrations which were much needed.
And thus all manner of trouble came upon the inhabitants of the Small House, falling upon them as it were in a heap together. It was as yet barely two months since those terrible tidings had come respecting Crosbie; tidings which, it was felt at the time, would of themselves be sufficient to crush them; and now to that misfortune other misfortunes had been added,—one quick upon the heels of another. In the teeth of the doctor's kind prophecy Lily became very ill, and after a few days was delirious. She would talk to her mother about Crosbie, speaking of him as she used to speak in the autumn that was passed. But even in her madness she remembered that they had resolved to leave their present home; and she asked the doctor twice whether their lodgings at Guestwick were ready for them.
