mlet that the Squire was there. Children and adults, a pale emaciated
crew, poured out into the wintry air to look. The Squire knit his brows
with annoyance as the little crowd in the lane grew. Robert took no
notice.

Presently he pushed open the door of the house where he had spent the
night. In the kitchen a girl of sixteen was clearing away the various
nondescript heaps on which the family had slept, and was preparing
breakfast. The Squire looked at the floor,--

'I thought I understood from Henslowe,' he muttered, as though to
himself, 'that there were no mud floors left on the estate--'

'There are only three houses in Mile End without them; said Robert,
catching what he said.

They went upstairs, and the mother stood open-eyed while the Squire's
restless look gathered in the details of the room, the youth's face
as he lay back on his pillows, whiter than they, exhausted and yet
refreshed by the sponging with vinegar and water which the mother had
just been administering to him; the bed, the gaps in the worm-eaten
boards, the holes in the roof where the plaster bulged inward, as though
a shake would bring it down; the coarse china shepherdesses on the
mantelshelf, and the flowers which Catherine had put there the day
before. He asked a few questions, said an abrupt word or two to the
mother, and they tramped downstairs again and into the street. Then
Robert took him across to the little improvised hospital, saying to him
on the threshold, with a moment's hesitation,--

'As you know, for adults there is not much risk, but there is always
some risk--'

A peremptory movement of the Squire's hand stopped him, and they went
in. In the downstairs room were half-a-dozen convalescents, pale,
shadowy creatures, four of them under ten, sitting up in their little
cots, each of them with a red flannel jacket drawn from Lady Helen's
stores, and enjoying the breakfast which a nurse in white cap and apron
had just brought them. Upstairs in a room from which a lath-and-plaster
partition had been removed, and which had been adapted, warmed and
ventilated by various contrivances to which Robert and Meyrick had
devoted their practical minds, were the 'four anxious cases.' One of
them, a little creature of six, one of Sharland's black-eyed children,
was sitting up, supported by the nurse, and coughing, its little life
away. As soon as he saw it, Robert's step quickened. He forgot the
Squire altogether. He came and stood by the