North and Ray were amongst the most devoted of these workers, learning much from the case at home how to treat others. But from Cyril there was little efficient help to be got. He had professed willingness to join in the work of personal ministration, but he shirked any actual contact with the sick. He would fetch supplies, and make a show of devotion, but there was no real heart for the task in hand. He loathed the close, crowded alleys and the sick-rooms. He could not make up his mind to enter them. He saw his brother and sister going about. He saw the clergymen, whose tasks he had so glibly spoken once of undertaking, toiling daily amongst the sick, taking the message of salvation to those who longed to hear it, and seeking to point the way above to such as had never been willing before to listen. He saw all this, but he could not do as those did. He would make his way with a sort of shuddering horror to some pleasanter place, away from the sights and sounds which disgusted him, and try to forget his father’s words, or his own vague misgivings as to coming trouble. Nor was Isingford alone troubled by this outbreak. The outlying families amongst the gentry came forward with money and help of other kinds. May Lawrence drove in almost daily with supplies of good things from dairy and larder; and gladly would she have been one of the band of workers, but her mother could not bring her mind to sanction it. Nevertheless the girl was to be constantly seen driving through the poor streets, and leaving her doles, with bright and cheering words, at the doors of the poor houses; and North and Ray, who saw her so often, declared that she was like a sunbeam in those dismal places. She always stopped to ask for Oscar, and at first got encouraging replies. Later, however, a different tone crept into the answering voices, and the reply would be gravely spoken. “He does not get on. The fever keeps so persistent, and we can see no change for the better. It is always slow in typhoid, but Oscar’s case is not running in the usual lines. It puzzles the doctors and makes us all uneasy.” May was sincerely grieved. She liked Oscar; she was truly fond of Sheila; and she had come to identify herself, in a fashion, with the household in River Street. She heard of their work, and saw it with her own eyes. The admiration she had always felt for North was increasing daily. But Oscar? Sheila scarcely left him now except when the nurse drove her away to take the needful rest, whether she could sleep or not. It seemed to her as though her whole life had been passed in watching that dear, wasted face. Everything else was so shadowy and indistinct; it seemed like scenes from another life.