They were quite happy all that evening, seeing to the poultry, and running races with Fido in the leafy lane.  They liked the importance of the charge of the house, although they missed the gentle presence of their aunt.  They shut up the house at dark, and prepared their simple supper, and whilst they were eating it, Benjamin said: 

“What shall we do tomorrow when we have finished our work?”

“I know what I should like to do,” said Joseph promptly.

“What, brother?” asked Benjamin eagerly.

“Marry, what I want to do is to go and see that farm house hard by Clerkenwell which they have turned into a pest house, and where they say they have dozens of plague-stricken people brought in daily.  I have never seen a pest house.  I would fain know what it looks like.  And we might get more news there of the truth of those things that they say about the plague in the city.  Ben, what sayest thou?”

Ben’s eyes were round with wonder and excitement.  The boys had all the careless daring and eager curiosity which belong to boy nature.  They were by this time so much habituated to living under conditions of risk and a certain amount of peril, that a little more or a little less did not now seem greatly to matter.

“Would our good aunt approve?” asked the younger boy.

“I trow not,” answered Joseph frankly; “women are always timid, and she would say, perchance, that unless duty called us it were foolish to adventure ourselves into danger.  But I would fain see this place, Ben, boy.  If in time to come we live to be men, and folks ask us of these days of peril and sickness, I should like to have seen all that may be seen of these great things.  Our father went many times to the pest houses within the city and came away no worse.  Why should thou or I suffer?  We have our vinegar bottles and our decoctions, and methinks we know enough now not to run needless risks.”

Benjamin was almost as eager and curious as his brother.  The spirit of adventure soon gets into the hearts of boys and runs riot there.  Before they went to bed they had fully decided to make the excursion; and they rose earlier next morning so as to get all their work done while it was yet scarce light, so that they might start for their destination before the heat of the day came on.

It was pleasant walking through the dewy fields, and hard indeed was it to imagine that death and misery lurked anywhere in the neighbourhood of what was so smiling and gay.  The boys knew what paths to take, nor was the distance very great.  Benjamin on his former visit to his aunt had spent a day with the good people at this very farm house.  Now, alas, all had been swept away, and the place had been taken possession of for the time being by the authorities, to be used as a supplementary pest house, where the homeless sick could be temporarily housed.  Generally it was but for a few hours or a couple of days that such shelter was needed.  The great common grave, barely a quarter of a mile away, received day by day the great majority of the unfortunate ones who were brought in.