“But, my good sir! the Bible, I thought, says that Aaron stayed the plague among the Israelites, and David the one at Jerusalem.”

“Sir, those was miracles, sir! and they was under the Law, sir, and we’m under the Gospel, you’ll be pleased to remember.”

“Humph!” said Tom, “then, by your showing, they were better off under the Law than we are now, if they could have their plagues stopped by miracles; and we cannot have ours stopped at all.”

“Sir, be you an infidel?”

To which there was no answer to be made.

In this case, Tom answered Heale with—­

“But, my dear sir, if you don’t like (as is reasonable enough) to take the responsibility on yourself, why not go to the Board of Guardians, and get them to put the Act in force?”

“Boord, sir? and do you know so little of Boords as that?  Why, there ain’t one of them but owns cottages themselves, and it’s as much as my place is worth—­”

“Your place as medical officer is just worth nothing, as you know; you’ll have been out of pocket by it seven or eight pounds this year, even if no cholera comes.”

Tom knew the whole state of the case; but he liked tormenting Heale now and then.

“Well, sir! but if I get turned out next year, in steps that Drew over at Carcarrow Churchtown into my district, and into the best of my practice, too.  I wonder what sort of a Poor Law district you were medical officer of, if you don’t know yet that that’s why we take to the poor.”

“My dear sir, I know it, and a good deal more beside.”

“Then why go bothering me this way?”

“Why,” said Tom, “it’s pleasant to have old notions confirmed as often as possible—­

  “’Life is a jest, and all things show it;
  I thought so once, but now I know it.’

What an ass the fellow must have been who had that put on his tombstone, not to have found it out many a year before he died!”

He went next to Headley the curate, and took little by that move; though more than by any other.

For Frank already believed his doctrines, as an educated London parson of course would; was shocked to hear that they were likely to become fact so soon and so fearfully; offered to do all he could:  but confessed that he could do nothing.

“I have been hinting to them, ever since I came, improvements in cleanliness, in ventilation, and so forth:  but I have been utterly unheeded:  and bully me as you will, Doctor, about my cramming doctrines down their throats, and roaring like a Pope’s bull, I assure you that, on sanitary reform, my roaring was as of a sucking dove, and ought to have prevailed, if soft persuasion can.”

“You were a dove where you ought to have been a bull, and a bull where you ought to have been a dove.  But roar now, if ever you roared, in the pulpit and out.  Why not preach to them on it next Sunday?”

“Well, I’d give a lecture gladly, if I could get any one to come and hear it; but that you could do better than me.”