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The dramatic transcription continues, with Joseph declaring that Catherine's father would've beaten them for their transgressions. Hindley doesn't go quite that far, simply grabbing them and flinging them into the kitchen.
where, Joseph asseverated
What the hell is that word even, no, really. I just looked it up because I have never seen it before in my entire life.
transitive verb
: to affirm or declare positively or earnestly <he always asseverated that he did not know — G. K. Chesterton>
The use of it by Chesterton has somewhat mollified me to its existence, but it certainly does not make it even the slightest bit more plausible that a young girl of questionable education (she hasn't even got a governess!) would ever think to use it.
But anywho.
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.
One can definitely tell that there is a connection between Charlotte and Emily with these events. Neglected children, vague threats of the supernatural, et al. (Jane Eyre is still better.)
At this point, Catherine tells us, she grabbed a book and a pot of ink from the shelf (why are there reading and writing materials in the kitchen) and started writing all these wonderful things we just read!
And which are now ending, as Heathcliff has proposed they grab a cloak and run out into the moors. Catherine is pleased at the prospect, noting that Joseph would probably think the devil had, in fact, come to fetch them away.
I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence took up another subject : she waxed lachrymose.
THESE WORDS. No I do know lachrymose but it's just, the word choices in this book, they are starting to get to me.
So the next bit is Catherine whining about how Hindley is treating Heathcliff like an unwanted bit of trash and Catherine isn't allowed to play with him anymore and SUDDENLY, SERMONS!
I began to nod drowsily over the dim page : my eye wandered from manuscript to print. I saw a red ornamented title--"Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy-First. A Pious Discourse delivered by the Reverend Jabes Branderham, in the Chapel of Gimmerden Sough."
And then Lockwood falls asleep.