“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.

It was of a water-mill, old, thatched, and with an unprotected wheel, like the one in the valley below.  Some gnarled willows stretched across the water, whose trunks seemed hardly less time-worn and rotten than the wheel below.  This foreground subject was in shadow, and strongly drawn, but beyond it, in the sunlight, lay a bit of delicate distance, on the rising ground of which stood one of those small wooden windmills known as Post-mills.  An old woman and a child were just coming into the shade, and passing beneath a wayside shrine.  What in the picture took Jan’s fancy it is impossible to say, but he gazed at it with exclamations of delight.

The Cheap Jack saw that it was certain to be bought, and he raised the price accordingly.

Mrs. Lake felt the same conviction, and began to try at least to get a good bargain.

“’Tis a terr’ble old frame,” said she.  “There be no gold left on’t.”  And no more there was.

“What do you say?” screamed the Cheap Jack, with his hand to his ear, and both a great deal too close to Mrs. Lake’s face to be pleasant.

“’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.