"Remember! What do you think? That was the old man who would never keep farthings. In the evening, when he'd got a handful in the course of the day's trade, he would pitch them in the river for the boys to find."
"Likely enough," interposed Crooks. "I mudlarked about here myself as a lad."
The eldest of the ancient watermen would have it that this old boy from Yarmouth was the original of Mr. Peggotty, and that it was at Blackwall Dickens first made his acquaintance. He said he had often seen Dickens himself about those parts.
We ventured a doubt.
"Why, bless my life!" he cried; "ain't I talked to him at the Causeway here many a time?"
This, of course, was unanswerable, so we asked what Dickens did when there.
The ancient waterman thought a moment.
"What did Dickens do?" he ruminated. "Now, let me see. What did Dickens do? I know: Dickens used to go afloat!"
The other declared that Dickens did more than that: he would often go into the fishing-smack.
We immediately assumed that it was the fishing-smack of the old Yarmouth salt that was meant. We were wrong. It was another "Fishing Smack," one of the quaint old taverns by the river still standing in Coldharbour.