Cheap Jack Zita

by S. Baring-Gould

'But I don't belong to the gentlefolks, nor have I got a conservatory.'

'No,' said Zita, rearranging herself on her seat. 'But if you wanted to keep folks off your platform, you could squirt dirty water over them.'

'I have Wolf. He is sufficient.'

'Well,' said Zita, with a slight diminution of buoyancy in her spirits and of confidence in her tone, 'then I'll offer you what I would not give every one the chance of having. I offer it to you as a particular friend. It's an epergne.'

'An epergne? What's that?'

'It is a sort of an ornament for a dinner-table. I will not tell you any lies about it. Father got it in a job lot, and cheap considering how splendid it is. It is not the sort of goods we go in for. It lies rather outside our line of business; and yet there's no saying whether it might not hit the fancy of General Jackass—I mean the public—that was father's way of talking of it. You really can't tell what won't go down with him. Will you have the epergne?'

'I'm not General Jackass, and I won't have it.'

'But consider—if you was to give a dinner-party, and'—

'What? in the mill?'

'No; When you marry a rich man.'