Franklin shook his shaggy head and bent lower over his bowl. "Would you have me carry coals to Newcastle?" he asked. "We must bide our time, for he that stops a little makes an end the sooner."
Sarah smiled, for she knew that when her father waxed proverbial his mind was making a pleasant excursion.
"We must bide our time," he repeated again. Neither Sarah nor her mother spoke, for they knew his mood.
A few hours before the Franklins began their digression on Betsey Shewell's fate a dark-coated figure stood before the Shewell house and threw tiny pebbles at the third-story chamber window where the girl slept. There was no one on the street. The solitary lanternman, who had laid aside his rattle and staff, called out in a husky voice the last "All's well and near morning," and departed. Daylight's eyes were on the verge of opening. Faint streaks of pink were drawn across a sombre sky like tassels bedecking a dull brocade. It was the wonder hour when ghosts are creeping back to their graves and the living are about to awake.
Soon a young girl appeared at the window, opened it, and began to talk softly with the man below. Sweet were the words that the dawn wind caught, for the pair were the lovers Betsey Shewell and Benjamin West. It was in this manner that they sometimes saw each other. Although the window was at too great a height for the youth to clamber up to his ladylove or the lady to descend to him, it still permitted soft vows and protestations. This particular morning West brought the sad news that he had obtained a berth on a vessel leaving port in a fortnight. Could she not in some way escape from her prison? The heart of the girl, so near and yet far away from her lover on the pavement, beat wildly 'neath her quilted night-robe. Vainly she longed for the wings of a bird that she might light by his side. For an instant there was a faint hope, and then it was dashed away.
Below a window casement creaked softly. Stephen Shewell was listening ensconced in the folds of the chintz window-piece. "Would thee, hussy? Would thee?" he murmured. He could hear the voice of West imploring his Betsey to try and fly with him. The old crone who kept his lodging-place in Christ Church Alley would secrete her until the ship left port. "Oh, but to have the impudent fellow by the neck!" In his rage he clenched the soft folds of his worsted damask banyan. He longed for something to throw,—as he ofttimes did at the vermin of the night. Over under the shadow curtains of the bed his wife was waking. From a happy dream the daylight led her eyes to her husband's face leering out of the curtain. Knowing of the stolen meetings, fright overcame the awe of her husband, and she gave one piercing shriek, prolonged and full of anguish. The three actors in the drama each received a shock in a different way. There was a hurry of footsteps in the street below. Windows rattled and opened. Grave night-capped Quakers looked askance at one another from house to house. What was the matter? Inside the third-story window of the Shewell mansion a girl swooned.
When the sun was high a great coach drove away from Shewell's and took the road for the Bickley house, Penn Rhyn, many good leagues from the city. It carried a pallid maid guarded by two stout Quakeresses, servants and aides of Stephen Shewell. The hoyden hussy was wedged between them, disgraced and bound for the sequestered rural shades where impecunious painters were not.
Out into the wooded country the vehicle rolled. At every jolt of the lumbering thing the larger and stouter of the two seized a blunderbuss from an arm-chest, in fear of possible highwaymen. The girl between them gave no heed to their thoughts. Like one only half awake, she gazed out at the country. Each field and fallow they skirted was bearing her farther away from him. The sweet odor of the hay-ricks, the clouds that seemed to be racing with them, the life of the waving trees, and the trilling birds fluttering out of the coverts they brushed, all spoke of him. Each whispered some message, she knew not what.