But there was another service that the
rector had daily to perform; not in his churchyard--that would have
perpetuated the infection--but on a healthy hill above the village.
There he daily read of 'the Resurrection and the Life', and week by week
the company on the grassy slope grew fewer and scantier. His
congregation were passing from the dell to the healthy mound.
Day and night the rector and his wife were among the sick, nursing,
feeding, and tending them with all that care and skill could do; but, in
spite of all their endeavors, only a fifth part of the whole of their
inhabitants lived to spend the last Sunday in Cucklet Church, as the
dell is still called. Mrs. Mompesson had persuaded her husband to have a
wound made in his leg, fancying that this would lessen the danger of
infection, and he yielded in order to satisfy her. His health endured
perfectly, but she began to waste under her constant exertions, and her
husband feared that he saw symptoms of consumption; but she was full of
delight at some appearances in his wound that made her imagine that it
had carried off the disease, and that his danger was over.
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