"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."
"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.
"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?"
The grave air he assumed would have deceived a much riper intellect than Sally's. She prepared to discuss the matter seriously.
"No doubt of that--here you are in proof of it, and there's your father in the hospital, and there's your mother managing the workhouse in the country. It was good enough as far as it went, but it has come to an end already, and there's no more to look forward to. That's what I call not satisfactory."
"No, Sally Chester. The spirits that came to Joanna when she went off that way beat Pharaoh hollow. He couldn't hold a candle to 'em."
Much distressed by this depreciatory criticism, Sally said:
"It was Pharer's first go, Mr. Dumbrick. Perhaps he wasn't quite up to the business."