“Yes, let’s go sell ’em,” suggested George.
It was not as easy to sell hard-shelled crabs in Bellemere as it would have been in a town farther away from the seacoast, for in Bellemere those who wished this form of sea food generally caught their own crabs. Still the boys had peddled crabs before.
Putting a stick through the slots in the sides of the peach basket and covering the crabs with wet seaweed to keep them alive—for it is dangerous to one’s health to cook and eat a dead crab—the chums started off on their peddling trip, followed by Patter.
“Want to buy any crabs, Mrs. Jones?” asked George, as the boys appeared at the back door of the lady who had helped to get up the church fair.
“Hard or soft?” she asked.
“Hard,” answered George.
“Thank you, no,” she answered, with a smile. “They’re too much trouble. If you had some soft crabs now, I’d take a dozen. Mr. Jones is very fond of soft-shelled crabs on toast.”
“We’ll try to get you some soft crabs this afternoon,” offered Bunny. “But they’re scarce, I heard Bunker Blue say.”
“I suppose that’s why my husband wants some,” went on Mrs. Jones. “People often want strawberries in January and soft crabs when they’re hard to get. Well, if you find any bring them to me. But I can’t use the hard kind.”
I might explain that a soft crab is one that has just shed its hard shell. Soft crabs are delicious fried in butter and put on a piece of toast. The only way to cook hard crabs is to boil them alive and pick out the meat, which is quite a lot of work. But, as Bunny had said, soft crabs were scarce. They are also much harder to catch than hard crabs.