Greatly was she interested in the home for desolate children provided by Lady Scrope, and ordered by her nieces and Gertrude.

She told the boys that her house had often been used to shelter homeless and destitute persons, whom charity forbade her to send away.

Just now she was alone; but even then she was not idle, for all round in the open fields and woods persons of all conditions were living encamped, and some of these had hardly the necessaries of life.

Out of her own modest abundance, Mary Harmer supplied food and clothing to numbers of poor creatures, who might otherwise be in danger of perishing; and she bid the boys be ready to help her in her labour of love, because she had ofttimes more to do than one pair of hands could accomplish, and her little serving girl had run off in alarm the very first time she opened her door to a poor sick lady with an infant in her arms, who had escaped from the city only to die out in the country.

It was not the plague that carried her off, but lung disease of long standing, and the infant did not survive its mother many days.
"But it frightened Sally away, poor child, just as if it had been the sickness; and I have since heard that she was taken with it a month ago in her own home, and that every one there died within three days.