"Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby," says Bucket as a kind of shabby palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. "Here's the fever coming up the street!"
As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth flits about them until they leave the place.
"Are those the fever-houses, Darby?" Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he turns his bull's-eye on a line of stinking ruins.
Darby replies that "all them are," and further that in all, for months and months, the people "have been down by dozens" and have been carried out dead and dying "like sheep with the rot." Bucket observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn't breathe the dreadful air.

"Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby," says Bucket as a kind of shabby litter is carried towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. "Here's the fever coming up the street!"
As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible faces and then fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls.
"Are those the fever-houses, Darby?" Mr. Bucket coolly asks.
Darby replies that for months, the people "have been down by dozens" and have been carried out dead and dying "like sheep with the rot." Mr. Snagsby feels as if he can't breathe.
