He left her in the company of her lovely lad, Ned, the cause of all her trouble. She was to take coach to the country, and her son accompanied her to the yard it started from, grumbling all the way at his hard lot; for now his mother was leaving him, he had no loving nature to impose upon. "If ever you're in trouble, my dear boy," sobbed Mrs. Chester, "don't keep it from me." "I won't," he replied, with much sincerity. "And if ever you grow rich, Ned----" The contemplation of this happy certainty in the future lightened her heart, and with kisses and tears she bade farewell to him and to the neighbourhood endeared to her in many ways, notwithstanding the hard fortune she had experienced there. In the meantime Seth Dumbrick retraced his way to his stall, somewhat unsettled in his mind as to the wisdom of the step he had taken. In his cellar he found Sally very industriously washing up some dirty plates; comfortably propped on a chair was the treasure-baby. Seth glanced suspiciously round to note if anything which should not have been disturbed was out of its place; Sally's eyes followed his with sly satisfaction. She had finished washing the crockery, and was now ostentatiously wiping her bare arms, like a little old woman of sixty. "I keep my eyes wide open," said Sally, "as wide as wide can be, and the things come out of the darkness to meet me. Jist look; I can walk all about, without touching a thing." Sally brought this to proof by winding her way quickly about the dark room, round the table, in and out of the chairs, round the aquarium, and all with such precision and anxious desire to please as could not fail to elicit approval. "You're a cunning little sinner," said Seth, "and I don't doubt that we shall get along pretty well together." CHAPTER XI. "Sally," said Seth Dumbrick, a fortnight afterwards; "I'm beginning to be bothered in my mind." It was night. Seth was playing "patience" with a very old and very greasy pack of cards. Sally was doing her best to mend her baby's clothes; she was as yet but an indifferent workgirl with the needle. It was not an unpleasant sight to see her taking her stitches, with knitted brow, and pursed-up lips, as though the fate of an empire was in the balance every time she dug her needle in and drew it out again. She had commenced the battle of life very early, but she had put on her armour with great cheerfulness and contentment, and was perhaps at the present moment the happiest little girl in Rosemary Lane. Her baby was asleep on the ground, comfortably covered over. "I'm beginning to be bothered in my mind," said Seth. Sally, ready for the bestowal of sympathy, looked up from her work. "About what?" she asked. "Many things. That trance of yours, to begin with. It didn't go far enough. Now, I ask you, as a prophetess--do you consider it an out-and-out prophecy?"