Cheap Jack Zita

by S. Baring-Gould

'Let him go,' says Zita. 'There are some things we have never found a use for here. There's that box of scents; there's the garden syringe. It is a sad pity so much capital should lie idle.'

'Father,' says the young man, 'I feel as though I must go. I do not say I shall be a Cheap Jack all my days.'

'Why, I had such grand views for you, Jim; I thought I would send you to college, and I hoped some day you might even try and get into Parliament.'

'Mark,'—it is Zita who speaks,—'I was a rambling girl once, a sort of a vagabond, going over the country selling my goods; but I have become stationary, like the van, stuck in the fen peat. I have not stirred for many a year, and have never desired to rove out of the Fens any more. It will be the same with Jim. He has it in his bones. It will do him an amazing lot of good. He'll get to know the General Public.'

'That is it, father,' says James. 'I seems as if I never could be happy and easy in my mind till I've done a stroke of business with that there Public. And I sees my way to it. There's abundance of thistles growing about the edges of the drains. I wants to cut 'em down.'

'Well, cut 'em. That need not take you away.'

'Father, I wants to make the General Public eat 'em, and pay for the privilege. I've heard in my sleep a voice in my ear that I do believe comes from the General Public, saying, "Jim! Jim! give us thistles!" And the wind always whistles to the same tune. And the thunder rolling seems to be the voice of the General Public, braying, "Give us thistles!" And, father, even the very bees when they hum about the flowers seem to convey to me in a whisper the message, as from a lover, but it comes from the General Public, "Give us thistles. We are sick for thistledown. 'Tisn't bread we wants—'tisn't meat—'tis thistledown." I can't say exactly how I'll dispose of it to them,—whether rolled up in pills, or stuffed in feather beds,—but I know the Public will buy thistles in any disguise. And then, father, think of the profits.'

'Mark,' said Zita, 'let him go. Cheap-jacking is an edication. It teaches a chap to know the General Public, what to lay on his back, how to tickle his ears, what you can make him swallow. If you think of making Jim a mimber of Parliament, there is no school, no college more suitable than the Cheap Jack's van. Let him go, Mark. He's a good boy—he'll come to no harm. He'll settle down the better after it, and he'll enjoy himself—"tremenjous."'

THE END.

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