"I've been reckoning up as I came along how much a year three-and-sixpence a week is, and I make it out to be more than nine pound. That's a big hole in eighteen pound. You wouldn't be able to save a shilling out of it."
"I don't want to; I only want to live. God help us! Poor people must live as well as rich."
"They've as much right to, certainly, but that's not to the point. This is. I'm not willing to take three-and-sixpence a week. I'll take half-a-crown."
"God bless you, Mr. Dumbrick! How shall I ever thank you?"
Seth made a wry face at the blessing.
"But I've got a bargain of another kind to make. There's Sally's baby. She comes too, of course, and we don't reckon her. She's thrown in, as a body might say--a kind of make-weight. Now Sally is your child, and I reckon you are fond of her."
Mrs. Chester sighed an eloquent assent.
"One of these fine days," continued Seth, "you might make your fortune sudden." (Mrs. Chester thought of her lovely lad and his lucky mole, and listened with greater interest.) "You might pick up a purse of money, or an old pauper might die, and when you ripped up her clothes you might find 'em stuffed with bank-notes. In that case you'd come to me and take Sally away."
"It ain't likely any of them things'll happen, Mr. Dumbrick."
"I've heard of stranger things. Now I go on again. I should by that time have got used to Sally, perhaps, and shouldn't like to part with her. That wouldn't matter to you. You'd take her. But there's the other. She's not your child, and you've no claim on her."