ter-in-law is going to leave us," Mr
Boyce said to the squire that same afternoon.

"Who told you that?" asked the squire, showing by his tone that he by
no means liked the topic of conversation which the parson had chosen.

"Well, I had it from Mrs Boyce, and I think Mrs Hearn told her."

"I wish Mrs Hearn would mind her own business, and not spread idle
reports."

The squire said nothing more, and Mr Boyce felt that he had been very
unjustly snubbed.

Dr Crofts had come over and pronounced as a fact that it was
scarlatina. Village apothecaries are generally wronged by the doubts
which are thrown upon them, for the town doctors when they come
always confirm what the village apothecaries have said.

"There can be no doubt as to its being scarlatina," the doctor
declared; "but the symptoms are all favourable."

There was, however, much worse coming than this. Two days afterwards
Lily found herself to be rather unwell. She endeavoured to keep it to
herself, fearing that she should be brought under the doctor's notice
as a patient; but her efforts were unavailing, and on the following
morning it was known that she had also taken the disease. Dr Crofts
declared that everything was in her favour. The weather was cold.
The presence of the malady in the house had caused them all to be
careful, and, moreover, good advice was at hand at once. The doctor
begged Mrs Dale not to be uneasy, but he was very eager in begging
that the two sisters might not be allowed to be together. "Could you
not send Bell into Guestwick,--to Mrs Eames's?" said he. But Bell did
not choose to be sent to Mrs Eames's, and was with great difficulty
kept out of her mother's bedroom, to which Lily as an invalid was
transferred.

"If you will allow me to say so," he said to Bell, on the second day
after Lily's complaint had declared itself, "you are wrong to stay
here in the house."

"I certainly shall not leave mamma, when she has got so much upon her
hands," said Bell.

"But if you should be taken ill she would have more on her hands,"
pleaded the doctor.

"I could not do it," Bell replied. "If I were taken over to
Guestwick, I should be so uneasy that I should walk back to Allington
the first moment that I could escape from the house."

"I think your mother would be more comfortable without you."

"And I think she would be more comfortable with me. I don't ever like
to hear of a woman running away from illness; but when a sister or
a dau