But when by some happy chance I managed to get hold of a few coppers, there was a cook shop opposite the main entrance to Billingsgate Market that never failed to attract me. Their specialité was pea-soup, which was exposed most temptingly in a large tank in one of the windows. It was sold at twopence a basin; but the half basin for a penny, not being carefully measured, lacked very little of being full. Moreover, to the initiate, there were degrees in the quality of this soup. It was freshly made on Monday, and even then was good. On Tuesday, however, the thick residue at the bottom of the tank remaining unsold was left, and the usual ingredients for a fresh mess were added to it, making it much richer and more substantial. On Wednesday, this process was repeated, with the result that Wednesday's soup was a thick pureé in which a spoon would stand erect, and he who could buy a penn'orth and eat it with a ha'penny hunk of bread, could go in the strength of that meal for twenty-four hours without any inconvenience. At least I can say for myself that I very often did, and my appetite in those days was terrible, abnormal. I really do not seem ever to have been fully satisfied. One thing I have reason to be thankful for; my pilfering propensities had almost entirely disappeared, for with the exception of an occasional roll from a baker's shop, or some unconsidered trifle of cheese or the dried fruit aforesaid, I never took what was not mine, and when I did, it was only under the pressure of great hunger. Once I made a serious mistake which gave me a bitter pang, disappointment so keen that I feel the sting of it even now sometimes. I was ravenously hungry, and there seemed to be no possibility of getting anything to eat. So diving down into the shell-fish market beneath the main building of Billingsgate, I watched my opportunity, and filled the breast of my shirt with whelks from a mighty tubful. My booty secured, I hastened back to the gloomy tap-room, there to devour my prize, but was immediately confronted with the difficulty of extracting the whelks from their shells. I had often seen it done by the men who kept whelk stalls in the streets, and it looked ridiculously easy. But I could not do it, and I was fain at last to smash the shells, no easy task either. Then clearing the mollusc from débris I tried to eat it, but it was quite impossible, it was tougher than gutta-percha, and I realised that my whelks were unboiled! These morsels require immense masticatory powers to deal with them at any time, but uncooked they would defy the jaws of a stone-crusher.