The Cheap Jack was a knave, but he was no fool. In a crowded market-place, or at a street door, no oilier tongue wagged than his. But he knew exactly the moment when a doubtful bargain might be clinched by a bullying tone and a fierce look on his dirty face, at cottage doors, on heaths or downs, when the good wife was alone with her children, and the nearest neighbor was half a mile away. No length of experience taught Mrs. Lake wisdom in reference to the Cheap Jack. Each time that his cart appeared in sight she resolved to have nothing to do with him, warned by the latest cracked jug, or the sugar-basin which, after three-quarters of an hour wasted in chaffering, she had beaten down to three-halfpence dearer than what she afterwards found to be the shop price in the town. But proof to the untrained mind is “as water spilled upon the ground.” And when the Cheap Jack declared that she was quite free to look without buying, and that he did not want her to buy, Mrs. Lake allowed him to pull down his goods as before, and listened to his statements as if she had never proved them to be lies, and was thrown into confusion and fluster when he began to bully, and bought in haste to be rid of him, and repented at leisure—to no purpose as far as the future was concerned. “Look here!” yelled the hunchback, as he waddled with horrible swiftness after the miller’s wife, as she withdrew into the mill; “which do you mean to have? _I_ gets nothing on ’em, whichever you takes, so please yourself. Take ‘Joseph and his Bretheren.’ The frame’s worth twice the money. Take the other, too, and I’ll take sixpence off the pair, and be out of pocket to please you.” “Nothing to-day, thank you!” said Mrs. Lake, as loudly as she could. “Got any other sort, you say?” said the Cheap Jack. “I’ve got all sorts, but some parties is so difficult to please. “Wait a bit, wait a bit,” he continued, as Mrs. Lake again tried to make him (willing to) hear that she wanted none of his wares; and, vanishing with the uncanny quickness common to him, he waddled swiftly back again to his cart, and returned, before Mrs. Lake could secure herself from intrusion, laden with a fresh supply of pictures, the weight of which it seemed marvellous that he could support. “Now you’ve got your choice, marm,” he said. “It’s no trouble to me to oblige a good customer. There’s picters for you!” “_Pitchers_!” said Jan, admiringly, as he crept up to them. “So they are, my little man. Now then, help your mammy to choose. Most of these is things you can’t get now, for love nor money. Here you are,—‘Love and Beauty.’ That’s a sweet thing. ‘St Joseph,’ ‘The Robber’s Bride,’ ‘Child and Lamb,’ ‘Melan-choly.’ Here’s an old”— “Pitcher!” exclaimed Jan once more, gazing at an old etching in a dirty frame, which the Cheap Jack was holding in his hand. “Pitcher, pitcher! let Jan look!” he cried.