“’Tis such an old frame,” she shouted, “and the gold be all gone.”
“Old!” cried the hunchback, scowling; “who says I sell old things? Every picter in that lot’s brand new and dirt cheap.”
“The gold be rubbed off,” screamed Mrs. Lake in his ear.
“Brighten it up, then,” said the Cheap Jack. “Gold ain’t paint; gold ain’t paper; rub it up!” and, suiting the action to the word, he rubbed the dirty old frame vigorously with the dirty sleeve of his smock.
“It don’t seem to brighten it, nohow,” said Mrs. Lake, looking nervously round; but neither the miller nor George was to be seen.
“Real gold allus looks like this in damp weather,” said the Cheap Jack. “Hang it up in a warm room, dust it lightly every morning with a dry handkerchief, an’ it’ll come out that shining you’ll see your face in it. And when summer comes, cover it up in yaller gauze to keep off the flies.”
Mrs. Lake looked wistfully at the place the Cheap Jack had rubbed, but she had no redress, and saw no way out of her hobble but to buy the picture.
When the bargain was completed, the Cheap Jack fell back into his oiliest manner; it being part of his system not only to bully at the critical moment, but to be very civil afterwards, so as to leave an impression so pleasant on the minds of his lady customers that they could hardly do other than thank him for his promise to call again shortly with “bargains as good as ever.”
The Cheap Jack was a man of many voices. The softness of his parting words to Mrs. Lake, “I’d go three mile out of my road, ma’am, to call on a lady like you,” had hardly died away, when he woke the echoes of the plains by addressing his horse in a very different tone.
The Wiltshire carters and horses have a language between them which falls darkly upon the ear of the unlearned therein; but the uncouth yell which the Cheap Jack addressed to his beast was not of that dialect. The sound he made on this occasion was not, Ga oot! Coom hedder! or, There right! but the horse understood it.
It is probable that it never heard the Cheap Jack’s softer intonations, for its protuberant bones gave a quiver beneath the scarred skin as he yelled. Then its drooping ears pricked faintly, the quavering forelegs were braced, one desperate jog of the tottering load of oddities, and it set slowly and silently forward.