Jack resolved to solve the doubt by addressing him. Just as he was about to open his lips, the man, giving him a somewhat menacing look, turned round and followed Long Sam out of the stable. Jack saw him whispering a few words into Long Sam’s ears.
“Oh, he’s all right and faithful!” he heard the latter say. “He knows nothing, and if he did, he’s not the lad to betray us!”
Jack could not tell whether these words were intended for his ears or not. However, the visitors walked away without taking any further notice of him.
In spite of Smart’s promises, Jack began to feel very weary of confinement in the precincts of the inn, and determine on insisting that Long Sam should take his place.
“He pretends to be a groom, and therefore I do not see that he should not act as one,” said Jack to himself.
Just, however, as he was about to insist on this arrangement with his companion, Long Sam told him that he might go into the city and take a look round London, and see what he could of the sights.
“Only take care to find your way back again here before the evening,” he observed. “Keep in the broader streets, and don’t tell any strangers where you come from, or what has brought you to the city.”
It was Sunday morning; and Jack, putting on his best garments which he had brought with him, started on his walk. He took his way along a very bad road leading to the Strand, with the fields and cabbage-gardens to the right, and Hyde Park to the left, which then extended nearly to the Palace of Kensington. Fortunately the weather was dry for the season of the year, or he would have been splashed over from head to foot. Besides Saint Paul’s, a number of beautiful churches were already raising their heads by the genius of Wren in various parts of London. Seeing a number of people collecting before a church, and having never failed at home in attending Divine Service, he took courage, and followed the crowd within the building. Although he had been accustomed occasionally to see people take their eyes off their books to watch the entrance of a stranger, or to examine the dress of their neighbours, or perhaps to exchange glances with one another, he was little prepared for the style of behaviour in which the congregation of the church where he now found himself indulged. Here were collected many of the beauties, and a few of the fine gentlemen of the day. It may have been that they lost little by not attending to the preacher. So Jack thought from what he could catch of the discourse, little of which he could understand, so full of flowers of rhetoric was it. Most of his neighbours were, at all events, flirting and ogling all through the service, and as they entered and took their seats all courtesied and bowed to their acquaintance, as if they had been at a theatre. Jack could not help feeling thankful when the service was brought to a conclusion.
“If this is the way the great people worship God in this big city, I am afraid the citizens and poorer ones can pay very little attention to Him at all,” he thought.
Jack found himself looked at askance by several persons of ordinary degree, among whom he stood at the farther end of the building. At length he made his way into the open air. He much admired, however, the coaches and sedan-chairs that came to fetch away all the grand people, with little negro boys from the Sugar Islands to hold up the trains of the ladies, and pages who sat on the steps of the gaily-painted coaches, drawn, some by four, and some by six horses.