Instead of contesting the point, Julius asked whether Miss Vivian were at home.

“No; that’s the odd thing.  I wrote, for M’Vie has no fear of infection, and poor Camilla is always calling for her, and that French maid has thought proper to fall ill, and we don’t know what to do.  Upper housemaid cut and run in a panic, cook dead drunk last night, not a servant in the house to be trusted.  If it were not for my man Victor I don’t know where I should be.  Very odd what that child is about.  Lady Susan can’t be keeping it from her.  Unjustifiable!”

“She is with Lady Susan Strangeways?”

“Yes.  Went with Bee and Conny.  I was glad, for we can’t afford to despise a good match, though I was sorry for your brother.”

“Do I understand you that she is engaged to Mr. Strangeways?”

“No, no; not yet.  One always hears those things before they are true, and you see they are keeping her from us as if she belonged to them already.  I call it unfeeling!  I have just been to the post to see if there’s a letter!  Can’t be anything wrong in the address,—­ Revelrig, Cleveland, Yorkshire.”

“Why don’t you telegraph?”

“I shall, if I don’t hear to-morrow morning.”

But the morning’s telegrams were baffling.  None came in answer to Sir Harry, though he had bidden his daughter to telegraph back instantly; and two hospitals replied that they had no nurses to spare!  This was the first thing Julius heard when he came to the committee-room.  The second was that the only parish nurse had been found asleep under the influence of the port-wine intended for her patients, the third that there were five more deaths, one being Mrs. Gadley, of the ‘Three Pigeons,’ from diphtheria, and fourteen more cases of fever were reported.  Julius had already been with the schoolmistress, who was not expected to live through the day.  He had found that Mrs. Duncombe had been up all night with one of the most miserable families, and only when her unpractised hands had cared for a little corpse, had been forced home by good Miss Slater for a little rest.  He had also seen poor Mr. Fuller, who was too weak and wretched to say anything more than ’God help us, Charnock:  you will do what you can;’ and when Julius asked for his sanction to sending for Sisters, he answered, “Anything, anything.”

The few members who had come to the committee were reduced to the same despairing consent, and Julius was allowed to despatch a telegram to St. Faith’s, which had sent Sisters in the emergency at St. Awdry’s.  He likewise brought an offer, suggested by Raymond, of a great old tithe barn, his own property, but always rented by Mrs. Poynsett, in a solitary field, where the uninfected children might be placed under good care, and the houses in Water Lane thus relieved.  As to a fever hospital, Raymond had sent his advice to use the new town-hall itself.  A word from him went a great way just then with the Town Council, and the doctors were delighted with the proposal.