“If your ladyship really means it—­” she began.

“My ladyship generally does mean what she says—­as Dorcas will tell you if you ask her,” was the rather short, sharp reply.  “Say no more, say no more; I hate chitter-chatter and shilly-shally.  The thing’s settled, and there’s an end of it.  Go your ways, go your ways; I’m none too ill for Dorcas to look to, now that the little fool is assured that I haven’t got the plague.  But you may have brought it here yourself, so you are bound in duty to come back and look after us the first moment you can.  Go along with you all, and bring me word what London is doing, and what the streets are like.  They say there be courts down in the worst parts of the town where not a living person remains, and where there be none left to give notice of the deaths.  You go and bring me word about all that.

“A fine thing truly for our grand city!  The living soon will not be enough to bury the dead!  Go! go! go!  I shall wait and watch for your return.  None will interfere with anything that goes on in my house.  You can come and go at will.  Dorcas will give you a key.  I will trust you.  You have a face to be trusted.”

“It is quite true—­nobody ever dares interfere with her,” said Dorcas, as she led the way downstairs.  “They think she is a witch; and truly, methinks she is the strangest woman that ever drew breath!  But I shall love her for what she has said and done today.  I pray you be not long in coming again.  None can want you much more sorely than I do!”

CHAPTER VIII.  IN THE DOOMED CITY.

The clocks in the church steeples were chiming the hour of ten as Dinah and her two companions started forth a second time upon their errand of mercy and charity.  It was an hour at which in ordinary times all the city should be alive, the streets filled with passersby, wagons lumbering along with heavy freights, fine folks in their coaches or on horseback picking their way from place to place, and shopmen or their apprentices crying their wares from open doorways.

Now the streets were almost empty.  The shops were almost all shut up.  Here and there an open bake house was to be seen, orders having been issued that these places were to remain available for the public, come what might; and women or trembling servant maids were to be seen going to and fro with their loads of bread or dough for baking.

But each person looked askance at the other.  Neighbours were afraid to pause to exchange greetings, and hurried away from all contact with one another; and children breaking away from their mothers’ sides were speedily called back, and chidden for their temerity.