And there is nothing like fish for “never coming.” If my own grandfather were a fishmonger and I saw him being chased up the street by a mad bull I should refuse to believe that he would “be there as soon as I was.” With butchers, too, I find that we pay for more than we either ask or desire. A leg of mutton with a hairy cloven hoof on the end (I still live in the hope of Mr. Jones lacing a neat boot on it some day when he thinks I am not looking and then saying it is a mistake he cannot account for) is an insult both to the living and to the dead. And there are tongues with a ton of salt in them. Mr. Jones weighs the tongue as it comes soaking from the tub and charges me for the heavy dripping mass of salt. He sends it to the house by the hands of a little boy who is fond of marbles, a keen spectator of football, and popular with his young associates. By the time Ruth gets the tongue on to her weighing machine it differs by several pounds from the little blood-stained hieroglyphic pinned to it. Mr. Jones explains this by the theory that it has “shrunk on the way from the shop.” If I might bear a few of Mr. Jones’s misdeeds to the Judgment Seat they should lose none of their full weight by my loitering on the errand! I think Ananias the greengrocer became prosperous and has such a nice large clean shop because he is so resourceful. I have never asked him any question which he could not answer satisfactorily, and the matter I speak of always seems to be one which he has already gone into very carefully on his own account. I asked him once why his potatoes were dark purple and full of holes, and he said that it was the time of year. But I was prepared for that and brought in a neat rejoinder. “Yes,” I said, “that is the proper answer, I know, but how is it that I can get excellent ones in the shops lower down?” “Ah, yes, m’m, _those_,” he replied; “of course we can get you _that_ sort of potato if you wish it, but I hardly think, if you knew the sort of places they come from, you’d fancy them. A very nice, cheap potato for the price, and has a nice appearance, but----” He shook his head with an expression of such dark mystery that I let the potatoes alone. In fact, I had a moment’s vague wonder whether the other kind were grown in the hospitals or whether white slaves with maimed hands dug unceasingly for them in a distant rubber plantation.