Which had no other effect upon Ned than to make him wish he was a girl, for girls always had the best of everything, and he couldn't be worse off than he was--an unconsciously-uttered truism, of which he did not see the point. They stopped up talking for an hour longer, and by midnight the room was quiet and dark. Mrs. Chester did not sleep; she lay awake all the night, thinking of the sad change in her fortunes which was about to take place.
[CHAPTER IX.]
Sally, walking about the streets the next morning, with her baby in her arms, was aware that a critical change in her prospects was impending, which threatened to separate her and the child who was now part of her life; and as far as such a mite as she can be said to determine, she resolved that such a separation should never take place. She would run away into the wide, wide world.
She set off at as good a pace as her little legs could achieve, but the child she carried was no light weight for one of her tender years, and before she had extricated herself from the labyrinth of courts, alleys, and narrow streets which intersected Rosemary Lane, she was exhausted. Leaning against the wall, she looked up to the sky with a sad and weary face. She had never forgotten the beautiful dream she had dreamt on the night of her brother's return, and it now recurred to her, bringing with it a dim hope that something wondrous might happen to aid her in her difficulty. If she had been acquainted with the history of Jack and his Beanstalk, she would have audibly wished for a tree--up which she could climb into a kinder land than Rosemary Lane. But although no miracle brought light to Sally's troubled soul, something happened which seemed to her very wonderful.
She had halted immediately before a cobbler's stall, and the face she saw as she looked down to earth was that of Seth Dumbrick the cobbler--no other, indeed, than the cobbler who in Sally's dream had appeared to her in the clouds, mending boots and shoes for the angels. Here was the realisation of Sally's dim hope. Fancies of grand processions and magic trees and angels in the clouds thronged her mind, revolving around two central figures--the sweet figure of her beautiful child, and the strange one of this queer-looking cobbler whose chin had not met razor's edge for a week.
Seth Dumbrick, observing Sally's agitation, and also attracted by the children, paused in his work, and spoke to Sally. She did not hear the words, but the voice of the man was kind, and that was sufficient to give colour to her hope.
"O Mr. Dumbrick," she exclaimed, pressing her hands to her breast, and gazing upon the cobbler with eyes open to their fullest extent. "It was you I dreamt of--it was you!"
"Ah, Sally," was Seth Dumbrick's calm comment, "it was me you dreamt of, eh? What sort of a dream?"
"Oh," cried Sally, "so good--so beautiful!"
"Tell me the dream," said Seth.