“Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back-kitchen; where, Joseph asseverated, ‘owd Nick’ would fetch us as sure as we were living: and, so comforted, we each sought a separate nook to await his advent. I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman’s cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion⁠—and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophecy verified⁠—we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.”

I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence took up another subject: she waxed lachrymose.