“And she should have a change of dress lying ready in the passage-room,” declared the young lady. “I think she is about my size. Do ask her to come.” “When I see that she is not more wanted elsewhere,” replied the doctor. “I need not explain, however, that that smile of hers is not an effect without a cause. If we could find out whether we have anything of the same cause in ourselves; we might have a cheerfulness of our own, without troubling her to come and give us some.” The ladies thought this odd, and did not quite understand it, and agreed that they should not like to be merry and unfeeling in a time of affliction; so they cried a great deal when they were not in the sick room. They derived some general idea, however, from the doctor’s words, that cheerfulness was good for the patient; and they kept assuring him, in tones of forced vivacity, that there was no danger, and that the doctor said he would be well very soon. The patient groaned, remembering the daily funerals of the last few weeks; and the only consequence was that he distrusted the doctor. He sank more rapidly than any other fever patient in the place. In a newspaper paragraph, and on a monumental tablet, he was described as a martyr to his sacred office in a season of pestilence; and his family called on future generations to honour him accordingly. “I am sorry for the poor young man,” observed the host at the Plough and Harrow; “he did very well while nothing went wrong; but he had no spirit for trying times.” “Who has?” murmured farmer Neale. “Any man’s heart may die within him that looks into the churchyard now.” “There’s a woman’s that does not,” observed the host; “I saw the Good Lady crossing the churchyard this very morning, with a basket of physic bottles on her arm—” “Ah! she goes to help to make up the medicines every day now,” the hostess explained, “since the people began to suspect foul play in their physic.” “Well; she came across the bit of grass that is left, and looked over the rows of graves—not smiling exactly, but as if there was not a sad thought from top to bottom of her mind—much as she might look if she was coming away from her own wedding.” “What is that about ‘sweet hopes,’ in the newspaper?” asked Neale; “about some ‘sweet hopes’ that Mr. Finch had? Was he going to be married?” “By that, I should think he was in love,” said the host: “and that may excuse some backwardness in coming forward, you know.” “The Good Lady is to be married, when she gets home to America,” the hostess declared. “Yes, ’tis true. Widow Johnson told the doctor so.” “What _will_ her lover say to her risking her life, and spending her time in such a way, here?” said Neale. “She tells her aunt that he will only wish he was here to help her. He is a clergyman. ‘O!’ says she, ‘he will only wish he was here to help us.’” “I am sure I wish he was,” sighed Neale. “I wonder what sort of a man will be sent us next. I hope he will be something unlike poor Mr. Finch.”