"You'll think better of it when it's fried."
"I couldn't touch it," with a vigorous shake of the head.
So he asked her to go down and make some cakes, and then caught another fish of a different kind the moment the bait reached the water, and a couple more for breakfast next day, and was thereby much reassured as to the future of their larder. He cleaned two of his fish and fried them with some pork fat as soon as she had made her cakes, and proceeded to reason her out of her prejudice.
"You have eaten fish all your life, haven't you?" he asked.
"Ye-es."
"Well, every fish has had to be caught before you could eat it. They generally leave them to die. But even that is probably only similar to our drowning, which is said to be about as pleasant a way as there is of going."
"It's horribly cold if you're lashed to a mast,"—with a reminiscent shiver. "And being rubbed back to life is just as bad."
"And we are more merciful, because we kill them at once."
"It's horrible to think that everything we eat, except things that grow of course, has got to suffer death for us."
"But you have always eaten these things without being troubled about it."