Hope by Lesley Pearse Page B

maybe a bite to eat, and bring her home in his gig.
    That hope was dashed when the lady who answered the door asked her to wait outside when she said her father was sick.
    The doctor came out to see her immediately. He was wearing a fancy red waistcoat, and looked much smaller without his usual tall hat. Almost as soon as she began to launch into a description of her father’s illness, she was aware he was backing away from her into the porch of his house.
    ‘So he was sick when he came back from Bristol? And this was four days ago?’
    Hope nodded. ‘He’d had an awful time because he had to sleep in a dirty room at the docks with several other men. He was shivering really badly even after Mother made him get into bed. Now he doesn’t even seem to know us!’
    The doctor looked alarmed. ‘Tell your mother she must keep the room well aired and the windows open,’ he said. ‘She must try and make him drink water and broth, and to boil any fouled linen. I will make up some medicine for him, but you children must keep well away from him.’
    ‘Mother already told me we’ll have to stay in the outhouse,’ Hope said. ‘Is it something very serious then?’
    The doctor looked as if he didn’t know how to reply. ‘Your father’s a strong man, so we can be optimistic. But wait there, Hope, I’ll get you some medicine for him.’
    ‘She’s the younger sister of the two girls who died of scarlet fever, isn’t she?’ Dr Langford’s wife asked as he came back into the house. ‘Do you know what ails her father?’
    ‘I hope I’m wrong, but it sounds like typhus,’ the doctor replied with a grimace, going to his cabinet which held various kinds of medicines, ointments and salves. ‘There was an outbreak of it at the workhouse recently, and of course Bristol gaol is never without it.’
    Mrs Langford was very fastidious and she shuddered. ‘But the Rentons aren’t low people,’ she said. ‘I’m told their cottage is a model of cleanliness!’
    The doctor sighed. ‘He’ll have caught it in the foul lodging house he had the misfortune to seek shelter in. Someone there had probably brought it in from a ship or a gaol. And by now his wife may be infected as well, perhaps even the children too.’
    ‘Oh dear me,’ Mrs Langford gasped. ‘You didn’t touch her, did you?’
    The doctor gave her a withering glance, somewhat shocked that her first thought would be for herself. But he didn’t feel able to reprimand her for lack of compassion, not when he had no intention of putting himself at risk by calling at the Rentons’ cottage.
    ‘Of course not. But I’d appreciate it if you’d put a few things in a basket for the child to take home. Brandy, perhaps, a few nourishing things that might stimulate their appetites. I shall send along some belladonna to slow Silas’s pulse and help the headache, but sadly that’s all I can do.’
    ‘I won’t go away,’ Hope said firmly, pushing her way into the cottage. ‘You’re sick too, Mother, and I’m going to take care of you.’
    It was ten days now since her father had come back from Bristol, and up till now she’d done exactly as her mother asked. She’d looked after the animals, chopped wood, drawn water, and slept in the outhouse alone every night.
    Joe had been to Briargate and to the Merchants’ farm to tell the rest of the family that their father was ill and they must all stay away. Mother had even insisted that Joe and Henry sleep in the barn down at the farm in Woolard rather than come home.
    Hope couldn’t understand why Nell hadn’t come regardless of their mother’s instructions. She knew Lady Harvey must have insisted Nell obeyed because she was afraid of her taking the disease back to Briargate and Rufus, but it was unlike Nell not at least to come to the gate with a parcel of food and check if there was anything further she could do.
    Matt had come to give them the news that Amy had given birth to a little girl and to bring some milk and