It is easy to give goods away; only an expert bagman can get a high price. Price is the real criterion of the traveller. In this respect the Gypsies were nothing if not ambitious, for they set out with the intention of exacting remuneration so exorbitant that their repairs often cost more than a pot new from the maker. Thus their only practicable policy was to conceal carefully the sum they proposed to ask, and escape at all costs from the danger of giving the estimate which was always demanded. The form of their contract was ingeniously designed to serve this purpose, and they also attempted to disarm natural suspicion by offering to mend—or insisting on mending, for they were very masterful—the first article for nothing as a proof of their skill. The latter device was generally unsuccessful, for in Great Britain the offer of something for nothing, or the pretence that it is work, not wages, that is wanted, is apt rather to increase than diminish mistrust. Moreover their conduct was in other respects far from reassuring. When the owner of a pot, wearied by their persistence and, if convinced of nothing else, convinced at least that his only hope of getting back to business lay in surrender, had resolved reluctantly to entrust the vessel to their care, they would reawaken his slumbering suspicions by suggesting that he would require surety for its safe return. And the unhappy man was obliged to postpone his relief from torture, and set his tired wits to work devising non-committal receipts for gold coins and foreign bank-notes in the genuineness of which he very shrewdly disbelieved.