No talk of either comet or plague was permitted at table; indeed the meal was generally eaten in something approaching to silence.  Sometimes the master of the house would address a question to one of the family, or suppress by a glance the giggling of the lads at the lower end of the table.  Joseph’s presence there rather encouraged hilarity, for he was a merry urchin, and stood not in the same awe of his father as did his comrades.  Kindness was the law of the house, but it was the kindness of thorough discipline.  Neither the master nor the mistress believed in the liberty that brings licence in its train.

Life went very quietly, smoothly, and monotonously within the walls of that busy house.  Trade was brisk just now.  The fashion lately introduced amongst fine ladies of having whole dresses of gold or silver lace, brought more orders for the lace maker than he well knew how to accomplish in the time.  He and his son and his apprentices were hard at work from morning to night; and glad enough was the master of the daily-increasing daylight, which enabled him and those who were glad to earn larger wages to work extra hours each day.

Being thus busy at home, he went less than was his wont abroad, and heard but little either of the sullen comet which hung night after night in the sky, or of the whispers sometimes circulating in the city of fresh cases of the distemper.

These last, however, were growing fewer.  The scare of a few weeks back seemed to be dying down.  People said the pest had been stamped out, and the brighter, hotter weather cheered the hearts of men, albeit in case of sickness it might be their worst enemy, as some amongst them well knew.

“I never believed a word of it!” said the wife of the Master Builder, as she sat in her fine drawing room and fanned herself with a great fan made of peacock’s feathers.  She was very handsomely dressed, far muore like a fine Court dame than the wife of a simple citizen.  Her comnpanion was a very pretty girl of about nineteen, whose abundant chestnut hair was dressed after a fashionable mode, although she refused to have it frizzed over her head as her mother’s was, and would have preferred to dress it quite simply.  She wished she might have plain clothes suitable to her station, instead of being tricked out as though she were a fine lady.  But her mother ruled her with a rod of iron, and girls in those days had not thought of rising in rebellion.

The Master Builder’s wife considered that she had gentle blood in her veins, as her grandfather had been a country squire who was ruined in the civil war, so that his family sank into poverty.  Of late she had done all in her power to get her neighbours to accord her the title of Madam Mason, which she extorted from her servants, and which was given to her pretty generally now, although as much in mockery, it must be confessed, as in respect of her finery.  She did not look a very happy woman, in spite of all