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Updated: May 19, 2025
At last the gypsies offer thirty rials for him; and after much chaffering I am glad to get rid of him at two dollars. It is all a trick, however; he returns to his master, and the brotherhood share the spoil amongst them.
There was an eager huckling for bargains, or a stolid calculation of values, or a loud commendation of wares, or an oppressive indifference. Where was the "fair" to which of old the people swarmed, glad-hearted? Where was even the relaxed caution of the shopping-day? Where was the gay chaffering, the boisterous bandying of wit?
He handled the usual topics with his customary vigor, and with that grace and warmth of delivery which always made his eloquence so persuasive and impressive. He spoke of the countless calumnies against himself, the chaffering niggardliness of the provinces, the slender result produced by his repeated warnings. He told them bluntly the great cause of all their troubles.
Twenty or thirty peasant women, coarse and masculine, but very tidy, with their snow-white caps and short petticoats, and perhaps half as many men, were chattering and chaffering over little heaps of fresh country produce. The onions and potatoes and cauliflowers were prettily arranged on the clean pavement, or on white linen cloths, and the scene was altogether animated and agreeable.
And, truly, there was foul knavery between these two men; for I heard high words and chaffering between them, as concerning a price or reward which Abel Doe claimed of the other for the help he was rendering him, in snapping thee up, with thee kinswoman. The effect of this unexpected revelation upon the young Virginian was as if an adder had suddenly fastened upon his bosom.
On market-days, some friendly enchanter struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place, and instantly arose the liveliest booths and stalls, and sittings and standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering and huckstering from many hundreds of tongues, and a pleasant, though peculiar, blending of colours, white caps, blue blouses, and green vegetables, and at last the Knight destined for the adventure seemed to have come in earnest, and all the Vaubanois sprang up awake.
Such transactions can never be very dignified. The cession of an important sea- port must necessarily be galling to national pride, and an injury to national prestige; and in this case was the more damaging from the tenure of Dunkirk being the token of Cromwell's proud supremacy abroad. The chaffering went on through all the usual stages of alternate bluff and concession on both sides.
"The fact is, my dear, I just wanted to show him and take down his pride I'm by my Australian education a shrewder hand than his old country. I bought the house on the beach while he was chaffering, and then I sold it him at a rise when the town was looking up only to make him see. Then he burst up about something I said of Australia. I will have the common clean.
To show you what sort of a heart I have sold for money? Why, you think you know, little Margret. You can reckon up its deformity, its worthlessness, on your cool fingers. You could tell the serene and gracious lady who is chaffering for it what a bargain she has made, that there is not in it one spark of manly honour or true love. Don't venture too near it in your coldness and prudence.
Aurora feels, indeed, that the poet's gift is not proved till age. She sighs, remembering her own youth, Alas, near all the birds Will sing at dawn, and yet we do not take The chaffering swallow for the holy lark. It is doubtless natural that the passionate romantic poets insisted upon the poet's youth, while the thoughtful Victorians often thought of himas old.
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