She asked Dinah of herself and her plans, and nodded her head with approval as she heard that the two girls were to attend the sick likewise under her care.

“Good girls, brave girls—­I like to see courage in old and young alike.  If I were young myself, I vow I would go with you.  It’s a fine set of experiences you will have.

“Young woman, I like you.  I shall want to hear of you and your work.  Listen to me.  This house is my own.  I have no one with me here save the child Dorcas, and I don’t think she is of the stuff that would be afraid; and I take good care of her, so that she is in no peril.  Come back hither to me whenever you can.  This house shall be open to you.  You can come hither for rest and food.  It is better than to go to and fro where there be so many young folks as in the place you come from.  Bring the girls with you, too.  They be good, brave maidens, and deserve a place of rest.  I have victualled my house well.  I have enough and to spare.  I like to hear the news, and none can know more in these days than a plague nurse.

“Come, children, what say you to this?  Go to and fro amongst the sick; but come home hither and tell me all you have done.  What say you?  Against rules for persons to pass from infected houses into clean ones?  Bah! in times like these what can men hope to do by their rules and regulations?  Plague nurses and plague doctors are under no rules.  They must needs go hither and thither wherever they are called.  If I fear not for myself, you need not fear for me.  I shall never die of the plague; I have had my fortune told me too many times to fear that!  I shall never die in my bed—­that they all agree to tell me.  Have no fears for me; I have none for myself.

“Make this house your home, you three good women.  I am not a good woman myself, but I know the kind when I see them.  They are rare, but all the more valued for that.  Come, I say; you will not find a better place!”

Dorcas clasped her hands in rapture and looked from one to the other.  The fear of the distemper was small in comparison with the pleasure of the thought of seeing her sister and aunt and friend at intervals, now that she was so completely shut up in this lonely house, and that the servants had all fled never to return.

It was just such an eccentric and capricious whim as was eminently characteristic of Lady Scrope.  She had had nothing but her own whims to guide her through life, and she indulged them at her pleasure.  She had taken a fancy to Dinah from the first moment.  She knew all about the family of her young companion, from having listened to Dorcas’s chatter when in the mood.  Keenly interested in the spread of the plague, which had driven away all her fashionable friends, she was eager for news about it, and the more ghastly the tales that were told, the more did she seem to revel in them.  To have news first hand from those who actually tended the sick seemed to her a capital plan; and Dinah recognized at once the advantage of having admittance for herself and the two girls to this solitary and commodious house, where rest and refreshment could be readily obtained, and where their coming and going would not be likely to be observed or to hurt any one.