acrilegious hands on a High Court of Justice, giving rise to what came
to be known as the "Black Assizes," all that had happened on that
occasion was in a fair way of business; good, straightforward,
old-fashioned contagion. If prison-warders did not sterilise
persons who had been awaiting their trial for weeks in Houses of
Detention--Pest-houses of Detention--you could not expect a putrid fever
to adopt new rules merely to accommodate legal prejudice. And in the
same way if Cavendish Square came sniffing up pestilential effluvia in
Drury Lane, it was The Square's look out, not Typhus's.

Nevertheless, the Lares and Penates of The Square, who varied as
individuals but remained the same as inherent principles--its Policeman,
its Milk, its Wash, its Crossing-Sweeper--even after the germ of
contagion had been identified beyond a doubt as a resident in Drury
Lane, held fast to a belief that Typhus had been dormant at the corner
house since the days of the Regency, and had seized an opportunity when
nothing antiseptic was looking, to break out and send temperatures up to
106 deg. F. For, said they, when was the windows of that house opened last?
Just you keep your house shut up--said they--the best part of a century,
and see if something don't happen! But the person addressed always
admitted everything, and never entered on the suggested experiment.

Persons of Condition--all the real Residents, that is--did not allow
themselves to be needlessly alarmed, and refused to rush away into the
country. There was no occasion for panic, but they would take every
reasonable precaution, and give the children a little citrate of
magnesia, as it was just as well to be on the safe side. And they had
the drains properly seen to. Also they would be very careful not to let
themselves down. That was most important. They felt quite reassured when
Sir Polgey Bobson, for instance, told them that there was no risk
whatever three feet from the bedside of the patient. "And upwards, I
presume?" said a Wag. But Sir Polgey did not see the Wag's point. He was
one of your--and other people's--solemn men.

Said Dr. Dalrymple--he whose name Dave Wardle had misremembered as
Damned Tinker--to Lady Gwen, arriving at Cavendish Square in the early
hours of the morning--still early, though she had been nearly four hours
on the road:--"I wish now I had told you positively _not_ to come....
But stop a minute!--you can't have got my letter?"

"Never mind that