On asking the price I was told 1s., but—bless their honesty!—they wouldn’t guarantee it was old. That teapot will be found among my Lowestoft group and it is probably the earliest example.
I will here refer to the Liverpool teapot on Shelf 3, [Plate XLI]. I had travelled by train to a town about twenty miles off and there called in a shop kept by a man whom his most intimate acquaintances might have found to be one of the best, but to my mind had some of the Stone Age blood in him, for he was indeed a hard case. I asked how much for the teapot.
“Five shillings to you.”
“Five shillings? Well, I’m sorry, but they ought not to have told you.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I just thought you must know your number’s up and that you are in training for the repentance stakes.”
“No sir, but I’m pleased to see you, and to be able to offer you a bargain this time.”
“Oh, thanks—I apologise.”
When I was leaving with the teapot under my arm he added to his farewell, “You’d be surprised if you knew how little I gave for it.”
This remark rankled, and I was no sooner in the train than I carefully examined my purchase, when I found that the spout had been snapped off clean just where it entered the body of the pot, and had been carefully and neatly stuck in again, and so the mysterious outburst of genial generosity was revealed.