“Why, sir,” said another vegetable-dealer, who was a robust-looking young man, very clean in his person, and dressed in costermonger corduroy, “I can hardly say what my business is worth to me, for I’m no scholard. I was brought up to the business by my mother. I’ve a middling connection, and perhaps clear 3_s._ a day, every fine day, or 15_s._ or 16_s._ a week; but out of that there’s my donkey to keep, which I suppose costs 6_d._ a day, that’s seven sixpences off. Wet or fine, she must be fed, in coorse. So must I; but I’ve only myself to keep at present, and I hire a lad when I want one. I work my own trap. Then things is so uncertain. Why, now, look here, sir. Last Friday, I think it was--but that don’t matter, for it often happens--fresh herrings was 4_s._ the 500 in the morning, and 1_s._ 6_d._ at night, so many had come in. I buy at Billingsgate-market, and sometimes of a large shopkeeper, and at Covent-garden and the Borough. If I lay out 7_s._ in a nice lot of cabbages, I may sell them for 10_s._ 6_d._, or if it isn’t a lucky day with me for 8_s._, or less. Sometimes people won’t buy, as if the cholera was in the cabbages. Then turnips isn’t such good sale yet, but they may be soon, for winter’s best for them. There’s more bilings then than there’s roastings, I think. People like broth in cold weather. I buy turnips by the ‘tally.’ A tally’s five dozen bunches. There’s no confinement of the number to a bunch; it’s by their size; I’ve known twelve, and I’ve known twice that. I sell three parts of the turnips at 1_d._ a bunch, and the other part at 1-1/2_d._ If I get them at 3_s._ 6_d._ the tally I do well on turnips. I go the same rounds pretty regularly every day, or almost every day. I don’t object to wet weather so much, because women don’t like to stir out then, and so they’ll buy of me as I pass. Carrots I do little in; they’re dear, but they’ll be cheaper in a month or two. They always are. I don’t work on Sundays. If I did, I’d get a jacketing. Our chaps would say: ‘Well, you _are_ a scurf. _You_ have a round; give another man a Sunday chance.’ A gentleman once said to me, when I was obligated to work on a Sunday: ‘Why don’t you leave it off, when you know it ain’t right?’ ‘Well, sir,’ said I, and he spoke very kind to me, ‘well, sir, I’m working for my dinner, and if you’ll give me 4_s._ or 3_s._ 6_d._, I’ll tumble to your notion and drop it, and I’ll give you these here cowcumbers,’ (I was working cowcumbers at that time) ‘to do what you like with, and they cost me half-a-crown.’ In potatoes I don’t do a great deal, and it’s no great trade. If I did, I should buy at the warehouses in Tooley-street, where they are sold in sacks of 1 cwt.; 150 lbs. and 200 lbs., at 2_s._ 9_d._ and 3_s._ the cwt. I sell mine, tidy good, at 3 pound 2_d._, and a halfpenny a pound, but as I don’t do much, not a bushel a day, I buy at market by the bushel at from 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ I never uses slangs. I sold three times as many potatoes as I do now four years back. I don’t know why, ’cept it be that the rot set people again them, and their taste’s gone another way. I sell a few more greens than I did, but not many. Spinach I don’t do only a little in it. Celery I’m seldom able to get rid on. It’s more women’s work. Ing-uns the same.”