“That’s a sharp little brat of the miller’s,” said he, alluding to Jan. “And he ain’t much like the others. Old-fashioned, too. Children mostly likes the gay picters, and worrits their mothers for ’em, bless ’em! But he picked out an ancient-looking thing,—came from a bankrupt pawnshop, my dear, in a lot. I almost think I let it go too cheap; but that’s my failing. And a beggarly place like this ain’t like London. In London there’s a place for every thing, my dear, and shops for old goods as well as new, and customers too; and the older and dirtier some things is, the more they fetches.”
There was a pause, for George did not speak; and the Cheap Jack, bent upon amiability, repeated his remark,—“A sharp little brat, too!”
“What be ’ee harping on about him for?” asked George, suspiciously. “I knows what I knows about un, but that’s no business of yours.”
“You know about most things, my dear,” said the Cheap Jack, flatteringly. “They’ll have to get up very early that catch you napping. But what about the child, George?”
“Never you mind,” said George. “But he ain’t none of the miller’s, I’ll tell ’ee that; and he ain’t the missus’s neither.”
“What is he to you, my dear?” asked the dwarf, curiously, and, getting no answer, he went on: “He’d be useful in a good many lines. He’d not do bad in a circus, but he’d draw prime as a young prodigy.”
George looked round, “You be thinking of stealing he then, as well as”—
“Hush, my dear,” said the dwarf. “No, no, I don’t want him. But there was a good deal of snatching young kids done in my young days; for sweeps, destitute orphans, juvenile performers, and so on.”
“He wouldn’t suit you,” grinned George. “A comes of genteel folk, and a’s not hard enough for how you’d treat un.”
“You’re out there, George,” said the dwarf. “Human beings is like ’osses; it’s the genteelest as stands the most. ’Specially if they’ve been well fed when they was babies.”