“Ay, that is ever the way,” said Harmer, sternly.  “The reckless monarch and his licentious Court draw down upon the city the wrath of God in judgment of their wickedness, and those who have provoked the judgment flee from the peril, leaving the poor of the city to perish like sheep.”

“Well, well, well; fine folks like change, and it is easy for them to go elsewhere.  I would do the same, perchance, were I so placed,” said the Master Builder; “but we men of business must stick to our work as long as it sticks to us.

“What about your mistress, Lady Scrope, Dorcas?  Has she said aught of leaving London?  She is one who could easily fly.  Not but what I trust the distemper will be kept well out of the city by the care taken.”

“She has spoken no word of any such thing,” answered Dorcas.  “She reads and hears all that is spoken about the plague, and makes my blood run cold by the stories she tells of it in other lands, and during other outbreaks which she can remember.  Methinks sometimes the very hair on my head is standing up in the affright her words bring me.  But she only laughs and mocks, and calls me a little poltroon.  I trow that she would never fly; it would not be like her.”

“Men and women do many things unlike themselves in stress of particular and deadly peril,” said the Master Builder.  “Lady Scrope would do well to consider leaving whilst the city has so good a bill of health; it may be less easy by-and-by, should the distemper spread.”

“Thou canst speak to her of this thing, Reuben, when thou dost see her on the morrow,” observed his father.  “Perchance she has not considered the peril of being detained if she puts off flight too long.”

Reuben said he would name the matter to the lady; and when Dorcas set forth upon the morrow for her daily walk, her brother accompanied her, and told her in confidence what he had not told to his family—­how Frederick Mason had been served by the irate old lady, and what a sorry spectacle he had presented afterwards.

Dorcas laughed heartily at the story.  She had no love for Frederick, and she told her brother that she suspected he had been the half-tipsy gallant who had striven to kiss her in the streets, and had partially succeeded.  This put Reuben into a great wrath, and he promised whenever he could do so to come and escort his sister home from the house in Allhallowes.  True, the distance was but very short, yet the lane to the bridge head was lonely and narrow, and Frederick was known for a most ill-conditioned young man.

Lady Scrope received Reuben in a demi-toilet of a peculiar kind, and a very strange and wizened object did she appear.  She thanked him for the rebuke she had heard him administer to the roisterer, enjoyed a hearty laugh over his wretched appearance, and then proceeded to indulge her insatiable taste for gossip by demanding of him all the city news, and what all the world there was talking about.