Do you ever go to see them ?" "To be sure I do, Master Jack, nigh every Sunday through the season.

I start after I get back from morning church, and I come home in the dark, or by moonlight.

My missus goes to church in the afternoons, and for that bit she locks up the house." "Oh, I wish you'd take me the next time!" said I.
"To be sure I will, and too glad sir, if you're allowed to go." That _was_ the difficulty, and I knew it.

No one who has not lived in a household of old-fashioned middle-class country folk of our type has any notion how difficult it is for anybody to do anything unusual therein.
In such a well-fitted but unelastic establishment the dinner-hour, the carriage horses, hot water, bedtime, candles, the post, the wash-day, and an extra blanket, from being the ministers of one's comfort, become the stern arbiters of one's fate.

Spring cleaning--which is something like what it would be to build, paint, and furnish a house, and to "do it at home"-- takes place as naturally as the season it celebrates; but if you want the front door kept open after the usual hour for drawing the bolts and hanging the robbers' bell, it's odds if the master of the house has not an apoplectic fit, and if servants of twelve and fourteen years' standing do not give warning.
And what is difficult on week-days is on Sundays next door to impossible, for obvious reasons.
But one's parents, though they have their little ways like other people, are, as a rule--oh, my heart! made sadder and wiser by the world's rough experiences, bear witness!--very indulgent; and after a good many ups and downs, and some compromising and coaxing, I got my way.
On one point my mother was firm, and I feared this would be an insuperable difficulty.