Mary Barton works for Mrs. Simmond as a seamstress. While the shop is reportedly well off, Mary is paid close to nothing and worked to the bone:

...she had engaged herself as apprentice (so called, though there were no deeds or indentures to the bond) to a certain Miss Simmonds, milliner and dressmaker, in a respectable little street leading off Ardwick Green, where her business was duly announced in gold letters on a black ground, enclosed in a bird's-eye maple frame, and stuck in the front parlour window; where the workwomen were called "her young ladies;" and where Mary was to work for two years without any remuneration, on consideration of being taught the business; and where afterwards she was to dine and have tea, with a small quarterly salary (paid quarterly, because so much more genteel than by the week), a very small one, divisible into a minute weekly pittance. In summer she was to be there by six, bringing her day's meals during the first two years; in winter she...

In this part of the story, Seacole ended up having a hard life in Balaklava. From there, Seacole ended up procuring the Turks from the Turkish Pacha, and would end up deciding to help out the Pacha by acting like some sort of Ambassoder. She would later meet up with the Turkish Pacha, which was said to have laid the foundation of a lasting friendship. Indeed the Pacha and her got along together, "The Pacha's great ambition was to be familiar with the English language, and at last nothing would do but he must take lessons of me" (pg. 98). It was an interesting moment in this story since we don't often see friendships like this being made in the story.

Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Penguin Classics. 1857.