"Oh, no," replied Sally, screwing up her lips, "only you was setting on a stool, mending shoes--as you're doing now." "Well, that's not much of a dream, Sally. You could dream that dream over again this minute, with your eyes wide open." "No, I couldn't--no, I couldn't!" protested Sally, with a vigorous shake of her head. "You don't know!" "Well, go on; I was sitting here mending shoes----" "No, no," interrupted Sally, "you wasn't sitting here." "Where, then." "There!" said Sally, pointing with her finger upwards to the sky. "There!" echoed Seth, with a startled look, following the line of Sally's finger. "And angels was flying all about you, and it was their shoes you was mending." And then Sally related the whole of her dream as circumstantially as it was in her power to do. The narration occupied some time, and at its conclusion Sally's face was red with excitement, and an expression of interest was in Seth Dumbrick's features. "And I was putting a pair of shining slippers on the feet of this little thing," he said, taking the baby in his arms. "I didn't know you had a little sister, Sal." "I ain't got none; she ain't my sister--she's my baby." Seth Dumbrick, holding himself aloof from his neighbours, and not being given to idle chatterings, knew none of the particulars of the child's introduction to Rosemary Lane, and he now learnt them for the first time from Sally's lips. "Poor little castaway!" he said. "She wasn't dressed like this when she first come," said Sally. "No! How then?" "She had nice things, better than I ever seed." "What's become of 'em?" "Pawnbroker's," tersely replied Sally. "Ah! and you've no idea who or where the pretty little creature's mother is?" "She never had a mother." "That's not according to nature, Sally. A mother she must have had." "No; she had a ma, not a mother. I knew she wasn't like us the first moment I ever see her. That was the night brother Ned come home, and me and baby went to bed together. Then I dreamed that dream of you and the angels. Wasn't it a beautiful dream?" "It was a rare fine dream, Sally, a rare fine dream! Angels! and Seth Dumbrick a-working for 'em! that's the finest part of it. Seth Dumbrick sitting in the sky, with angels begging of him to mend their shoes! And I'll do it too--when I get there. I'll set up as a cobbler in the clouds, and make my fortune. Ha, ha, ha! Sally, go on dreaming like that, and something'll come of it." "What'll come of it?" asked literal Sally. Seth Dumbrick rubbed his chin with his horny hand. The bristles were so strong, and his hand was so hard, that the action produced a rasping sound, such as the rubbing of sand-paper produces. "There was a woman once, Now her name was Southcott--Joanna Southcott it was. Now she was a poor woman, too, as you'll be."