‘Come! Rhoda,’ exclaimed Mrs Berry tartly, but not unkindly, ‘there’s that brat of yours crying again. Take him up, do! Nothing’s good enough for him, I suppose, as it wasn’t for his father before him! My gracious! I believe he grows uglier and uglier every day. You’re as unlike as light and darkness. The child’s a perfect nigger!’ Rhoda did not make any retort. She was a fair, slender girl of about nineteen, with blue eyes and yellow hair, a very elegant young woman in appearance, but of a sad countenance. She raised her youngster in her arms and kissed him fondly. He was certainly unusually dark for so young an infant, but bore unmistakably Frederick Walcheren’s features and complexion. ‘Have you heard the news?’ said Mrs Berry. ‘Mr Jenkins has come in for five hundred pounds by the death of an uncle in Australia that he never remembers to have heard of. Mrs Jenkins is half out of her mind with joy. She couldn’t believe me last week when I told her there was money on the road for them. She said there wasn’t a creature in the wide world that it could possibly come from. But I’m always right. The cards never fail me, never. There’s Fanny Benson pronounced out of danger this morning, notwithstanding all the doctors’ verdicts. I met her mother in the street just now, and she says she’s wonderful; been sitting up in bed and eating rice pudding. Why, when Mrs Benson came to me last Thursday, crying her eyes out because the doctor had said there was no hope, I told her it was all nonsense, and there was no death in her cards, nor nothing like it. I wish you’d let me lay the cards for you, Rhoda. It’s ages since I’ve done so.’ ‘No! no! mother,’ cried the girl, shrinking backwards. ‘I would rather not, really!’ ‘But why not?’ asked Mrs Berry, who was very proud of her gift of second sight, and could not bear to hear it discredited. ‘You know how right they came before you went to London. If you’d followed the cards then, you’d never have had that young crow upon your lap now. And I’ve never laid them for you, with your own cutting, since. Don’t you believe in them, Rhoda?’ ‘Oh, yes, mother. Perhaps it is because I believe in them so much that I don’t care to see them laid for me. Troubles come soon enough without our knowing them beforehand. And if you were to tell me anything unpleasant--that I should lose my baby, or have some other trouble--I don’t think I could bear it, mother, not just yet. I’m so eaten up with disappointment already.’ ‘My poor girl,’ said Mrs Berry, compassionately, ‘you mustn’t mind all I say about that little crow, Rhoda! He reminds me too much of your misfortune; that’s why I speak short of him sometimes. But, bless you! I wish him no harm, nor will he come to harm either. He’ll live to be a man, and a comfort to you yet. I can read that in his face.’