Do put on your cap, Charlie, and go out and see if you can find him, and persuade him to come home and go to bed; perhaps he will listen to you." Charlie was absent an hour, and returned saying that he could not find his brother.
"Perhaps he's gone up to Varley as he did last time," Mrs.Mulready said.

"I am sure I hope he has, else he will be wandering about all night, and he had such a strange lock in his face that there's no saying where he might go to, or what he might do." Charlie was almost heartbroken, and sat up till long past his usual time, waiting for his brother's return.

At last his eyes would no longer keep open, and he stumbled upstairs to bed, where he fell asleep almost as his head touched the pillow, in spite of his resolution to be awake until Ned returned.
Downstairs Mrs.Mulready kept watch.

She did not expect Ned to return, but she was listening for the wheels of her husband's gig.

It was uncertain at what time he would return; for when he rose from the tea table she had asked him what time he expected to be back, and he had replied that he could not say; he should stop until the repairs were finished, and she was to go to bed and not bother.
So at eleven o'clock she went upstairs, for once before when he had been out late and she had sat up he had been much annoyed; but after she got in bed she lay for hours listening for the sound of the wheels.