If Dinah will take you, and if the Harmers will let you both sally forth from the house, I will not keep you back.

It may be indeed that God has called you; and if so, may He keep and bless you both." Father and daughter embraced each other tenderly.
In those times the shadow of death was so very apparent that no one knew from day to day what might befall him ere the morrow.

Strong men, leaving their homes apparently in their usual health, would sink down in the streets an hour afterwards, and perhaps die before the very eyes of the passersby, none of whom would be found willing so much as to approach the sufferer with a kind word.

Men would hasten by with vinegar-steeped cloths held closely over their faces; and later on some bearer with a cart or barrow would be sent to carry away the corpse and fling it into the nearest pit, of which there was now an ever-increasing number in the various parishes.
It will well be understood that in such days as these the need for nurses for the sick was terribly great.

The majority of those so-called nurses were women of the lowest class, whose motive was personal gain, not a loving desire to mitigate the sufferings of the stricken.
Whether all the dismal tales told by the miserable beings shut up in their houses, and left to the mercy of watchmen and nurses, were true may be well open to doubt.