Just as she was moving, Sylvia's cold little hand was laid on her arm.
'I am main and thankful to yo'.

I ask yo'r pardon for speaking cross, but, indeed, my heart's a'most broken wi' fear about feyther.' The voice was so plaintive, so full of tears, that Hester could not but yearn towards the speaker.

She bent over and kissed her cheek, and then clambered unaided down by the wheel on the dark side of the cart.

Wistfully she longed for one word of thanks or recognition from Philip, in whose service she had performed this hard task; but he was otherwise occupied, and on casting a further glance back as she turned the corner of the street, she saw Philip lifting Sylvia carefully down in his arms from her footing on the top of the wheel, and then they all went into the light and the warmth, the door was shut, the lightened cart drove briskly away, and Hester, in rain, and cold, and darkness, went homewards with her tired sad heart.
Philip had done all he could, since his return from lawyer Dawson's, to make his house bright and warm for the reception of his beloved.
He had a strong apprehension of the probable fate of poor Daniel Robson; he had a warm sympathy with the miserable distress of the wife and daughter; but still at the back of his mind his spirits danced as if this was to them a festal occasion.

He had even taken unconscious pleasure in Phoebe's suspicious looks and tones, as he had hurried and superintended her in her operations.