"'Tis not at the Tabernacle, but at Kennington, in the open air."
"And we may have to stand all the time. I think I'd rather stay at home with Georgie."
"Her ladyship will call for me at nine. The boy will be in bed and asleep hours before."
"I love to sit by his bed sewing. He wakes sometimes, and likes to find me there; and sometimes he has bad dreams, and wakes in a fright."
"And wants his mother's hand and voice to soothe his spirits. Happy child, who knows not the burden of sin, and has but shadowy fears that vanish at a word of comfort! Well, you must do as you please, Lucy; but there will be room for you in her ladyship's coach."
"Oh, she is always kind, and I should love the ride; but Mr. Whitefield's sermons are so long."
Stobart wrote briefly to assure Lady Kilrush of his pleasure in being her escort to Kennington, with the customary formal conclusion, protesting himself her ladyship's "most obliged and most devoted humble servant."
When his letter was despatched he went out to the Marsh, and walked for an hour in that waste region outside the streets and alleys where his work lay. His wife's parlour had grown too small for him. He felt stifled within those four walls.
He would see her again, spend some hours in her company, her trusted friend and protector, permitted to guard her amidst that rabble throng which was likely to assemble on the common. His heart beat with a fierce rapture at the thought of those coming hours. Only to stand by her side under the summer stars, hemmed round, half suffocated by the crowd; only to see her, and to hear the adored music of her voice, the voice which had so haunted him of late, that he had started up out of sleep sometimes, hearing her call his name. Vain delusion, that betrayed the drift of his dreams!
Her coach was at his door five minutes before the hour. The night was sultry, and the two parlour windows were wide open. He had been leaning with folded arms upon the window-sill watching for her, while Lucy sat at the table sewing by the light of two candles in tall brass candlesticks. She had thought the pair of tallow candles a mark of gentility in the beginning of her married life, when the remembrance of the slum near Moorfields was fresh; but she knew better now, having seen the splendours of St. James's Square, and wax candles reckoned by the hundred.