cas would have expostulated and explained and apologized, but
her mistress cut her short with a sharp tap of her fan.

"Little fool, hold thy peace! as though I didn't know an honest
face when I see it!

"Come, good people, look me well over, and you'll soon see I have
none of the tokens. It is but a colic, such as I am well used to at
this season of the year; but in these days let a body's finger but
ache, and all the world runs helter skelter this way and that,
calling out, 'The plague! the plague!' The plague, forsooth! as
though I had not lived through a score of such scares of plague. If
men would but listen to me, there need never be any more plagues in
London. But the fools will not hear wisdom."

"What is your remedy, madam?" asked Dinah, who saw very clearly
that the old lady had gauged her symptoms aright; and although she
had alarmed her attendants by a partial collapse an hour before,
was mending now, and had no symptom of the distemper upon her.

"My remedy is too simple for fools. Fill up every well in
London--which is just a poison trap--and drink only New River
water, and make every house draw its supply from thence, and we
shall soon cease to hear of the plague! That's my remedy; but when
I tell men so, they gibe and jeer and call me fool for my pains.
Fools every one of them! If it would only please Providence to burn
their city about their ears and fill up all the old wells with the
rubbish, you would soon see an end of these scares of plague. Tush!
if men will drink rank poison they deserve to have the plague--that
is all I have to say to them."

Such an idea as this was certainly far in advance of the times, and
it was small wonder that Lady Scrope found no serious listeners
when she propounded her scheme. Dinah did not profess to have an
opinion on such a wide question. Her duties were with the sick.
Others must seek for the cause of the outbreak. That was not the
province of women.

Something in her way of moving about and performing her little
offices pleased the fancy of the capricious old woman, as did also
the aspect of the two girls, who were assisting Dorcas to set the
room to rights after the confusion of the morning, when the
mistress had suddenly been taken with a violent colic, which had
turned her blue and rigid, and had convinced her household that she
was taken for death, and that by a seizure of the prevailing
malady.

She asked Dinah of herself and her plans, and nodded he