“Lor’ blime me!” Jerry used to say. “Never knowed such a lot in me life for soft roes. Good job I ain’t a soft-roed ‘un or I should’ve got aten up meself before now.” And he pinched the bloaters between his great red fingers, pretended to consider the matter with his head on one side, then declared each separate fish had the softest of soft roes, whether it had or not. “Oozin’, simply oozin’ with goodness, I tell ye!” and oozing it certainly was when released from his grip. “But what’s the good of one bloater amongst the lot of ye? Tell ye what I’ll do,” he would urge. “I’ll put ye in these three whoppers for tuppence-ha’penny.”

It was no good. The two pence-halfpenny was never forthcoming; even the penny could so ill be spared that the purchaser often felt selfish and greedy after she had parted with it; but, after a morning at the washtub, she needed a treat so badly, and a bloater made a tasty change from her usually monotonous diet.

The oranges were tempting, too, for the children loved them. It was one of their greatest treats to find oranges on the mantelshelf when they came home from school in winter. Sour they might be and hard and skinny within; but without how rich and glowing! and what a strange foreign scent pervaded the room when their mother divided each one into quarters and distributed them. Even when the pulp had been eaten, the peel remained, to be dried on the hob and taken to school to chew in class or ‘swopped’ for conkers or string or some other desirable object.

Jerry’s cart had a great attraction for Laura. At the sound of his wheels she would run out to feast her eyes on the lovely rich colours of grapes and pears and peaches. She loved to see the fish, too, with their cool colours and queer shapes, and would imagine them swimming about in the sea or resting among the seaweed. “What is that one called?” she asked one day, pointing to a particularly queer-looking one.

“That’s a John Dory, me dear. See them black marks? Look like finger-marks, don’t ‘em? An’ they do say that they be finger-marks. He made ‘em, that night, ye know, when they was fishin’, ye know, an’ He took some an’ cooked ‘em all ready for ‘em, an’ ever since, they say, that ivery John Dory as comes out o’ th’ sea have got His finger-marks on ‘un.”

Laura was puzzled, for Jerry had mentioned no name and he was, moreover, a drinking, swearing old man, little likely, as she thought, to repeat a sacred legend.

“Do you mean the Sea of Galilee?” she asked timidly.