As a child he had heard his sisters talk so often of the fire at Epworth Rectory that the very scene--and especially Jacky's escape--was bitten on the blank early pages as a real memory.

He had half a mind now to question his mother about it and startle her with details, but her face forbade him.
She recovered her colour in bargaining with a waterman at Blackwall Stairs.

Two stately Indiamen lay out on the river below, almost flank by flank; and, as it happened, the farther one was at that moment weighing her anchor, indeed had it tripped on the cathead.
A cloud of boats hung about her, trailing astern as her head-sails drew and she began to gather way on the falling tide.
The waterman, a weedy loafer with a bottle nose and watery blue eyes, agreed to pull across for threepence; but no sooner were they embarked and on the tide-way, than he lay on his oars and jerked his thumb towards the moving ship.

"Make it a crown, ma'am, and I'll overhaul her," he hiccupped.
Mrs.Wesley glanced towards the two ships and counted down threepence deliberately upon the thwart facing her, at the same time pursing up her lips to hide a smile.

For the one ship lay moored stem and stern with her bows pointed up the river, and the other, drifting past, at this moment swung her tall poop into view with her windows flashing against the afternoon sun, and beneath them her name, the _Josiah Childs_, in tall gilt letters.
"Better make it a crown, ma'am," the waterman repeated with a drunken chuckle.
Mrs.Wesley rose in her seat.