Kit Tyler does not miss any formal prayer meetings under the strict surveillance of her pious Uncle Matthew; however, she does miss a Thursday Lecture, which is the day that people are publicly punished in Wethersfield. Kit is terrified of seeing what will happen to Nat, who is being punished for illuminating jack-o-lanterns in the house of William Ashby.
An hour before the meeting is due to start, Kit sneaks out alone and goes to see Nat, who is locked up in the stocks with some of his fellow sailors. Kit attempts to comfort Nat and offers to bring him food, but Nat is too proud for that and says, 'You can stop trying to be a lady of mercy. 'Twas well worth it. I'd gladly sit here another five hours for a sight of Sir William's face that evening." Unimpressed by this childish display of bravado, Kit leaves the square with "[h]ead held high," trying "to keep a ladylike pace." Embarrassed that her very public "foolish concern" might be the subject of the town gossip, Kit wanders to the meeting house, where she sees the formal notice of Nat's punishment: he must pay a fine of forty shillings, remain in the stocks "from one hour before the Lecture till one hour after," and must never return to Wethersfield "on certainty of thirty lashes at the whipping post."
Kit decides right then and there that she will not go into the Meeting House to hear Nat's sentence read to the entire town since "[s]he could not bear to sit there and hear that sentence read aloud," or "face the family, or the whispering and staring that would turn her own family pew into a pillory." This is, as the book says, "the first time since she had come to Wethersfield in the spring that she had dared to miss a Thursday Lecture."
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