“The few who don’t admire it simply don’t understand it. Their souls are all shriveled up, and they don’t know what to do with such fresh honesty.”

Mrs. B helped Mary shift her weight and turn toward him. Johnson wanted to help but didn’t know how.

“It’s your opinion that matters,” said Mary, when she settled in. “Well, you and Mrs. Blenkinsop.”

Johnson took the midwife in. “Even got you reading it, have they?”

“Best I can, sir.” She tucked Mary’s covers neatly around her. “I didn’t know people could write books like that.”

“That’s because they haven’t. I don’t quite know how she’s done it, but it’s a new mode altogether.”

“The way she turns feeling into thinking and thinking into feeling—” Mrs. B stopped herself. She’d said more than she meant to.

“No, I agree. It captures the mobility of her soul.”

“I’ve never been outside England myself. But I feel like I have, when I read it.”

“Exactly. Why, I suspect she’ll make a fashion of long, solitary, questing journeys. Very romantic. Probably all to the frozen North!”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” said Mrs. B.

“It’s almost as if she travels beyond the bounds of mortality itself.”

“I’m not dead yet!” said Mary with a quiet laugh.

“Oh, I’m such a buffoon,” said Johnson. “Of course you’re still here. Look at you.”

Mary seemed tired, but Mrs. B could tell they didn’t want to let each other go. Her eyes closed after a while, she drifted off, but Johnson stayed by her side for the longest time, holding her hand in both of his, eyes glistening with tears. When he finally got up to go, he kissed Mary on the forehead, and thanked Mrs. B for letting him sit with her.

Fordyce was there after his lunch, when Mary woke with a start, hot cheeks, and a racking cough. She looked wild-eyed and frightened, as if she’d had a terrible dream, or delirium, and couldn’t quite catch her breath from it. Her pulse was racing, and she clutched her stomach in pain. He examined her joints—knees and elbows—and found them red and inflamed. Mrs. B tried to cool her with a damp cloth, but the fever was coming on fierce. She was tired of the fight, and fell into a hard sleep.

“It isn’t good, Blenkinsop,” said the doctor. “I don’t like it at all.”

“Is she dying, sir?” said Mrs. B in her straight-out-with-it way, though she knew the answer already.

“Well, let’s not build a coffin just yet, shall we?” Fordyce slumped in a chair, splayed his legs. He worried the cloth on his thighs, that way men have, and studied the patient from six feet away. Finally he filled his big belly with air, and sighed. He wasn’t obviously drunk, but contemplative, more than usual.