“I am getting through, ma’am, thank you. I seem to see the end of the white-washing, for one thing. They have sent us more brushes of the right sort from O——, and I should like, if I could, to get two or three boys into training. They might do the outhouses and the lower parts, where there are fewest sick, while I am upstairs. But, for some reason or other, the lads are shy of me. There is some difference already, I assure you, ma’am, both as to sight and smell; but there might be more, if I could get better help.” “And you are careful, I hope, for Ann’s sake, to put all the linen first into a tub of water outside.” “Yes, surely. I got the carpenter’s men to set a row of tubs beside our door, and to promise to change the water once a day. I laughed at them for asking if they could catch the fever that way: and they are willing enough to oblige where there’s no danger. Simpson offered to look to our boiler as he goes to the bakehouse when, as he says, Ann and I ought to be asleep. I let him do it and thank him; but it is not much that we sleep, or think of sleeping, just now.” “Indeed,” said Mary, “you have a hard life of it, and without pay or reward, I am afraid. I never saw such——” “Why, ma’am,” said Warrender, “you are the last person to say those sort of things. However, it is not a time for praising one another, when there are signs in the heaven, and God’s wrath on earth.” “You saw the comet, did you? How beautiful it is! It will cheer our watch at nights now. Ah! you see I don’t consider it anything fearful, or a sign of anything but that, having a new sort of stars brought before our eyes to admire, we don’t understand all about the heavens yet, though we know a good deal; and just so with the fever: it is a sign, not of wrath, as I take it, but that the people here do not understand how to keep their health. They have lived in dirt, and damp, and closeness, some hungry and some drunken: and when unusual weather comes, a wet spring and a broiling summer, down they sink under the fever. Do you know, I dare not call this God’s wrath.” Warrender did not like to say it, but the thought was in his mind, why people were left so ignorant and so suffering. Mary was quick at reading faces, and she answered the good fellow’s mind, while she helped to hoist the bundle of linen on his shoulder. “We shall see, Warrender, whether the people can learn by God’s teaching. He is giving us a very clear and strong lesson now.” Warrender touched his hat in silence, and walked away.