He had been very near having a penny loaf.
Half a cookie, which a stormy child had thrown away to ease his temper, had done further and perhaps better service in easing Gibbie's hunger.

The green-grocer woman at the entrance of the court where his father lived, a good way down the same street in which he had found the lost earring, had given him a small yellow turnip--to Gibbie nearly as welcome as an apple.

A fishwife from Finstone with a creel on her back, had given him all his hands could hold of the sea-weed called dulse, presumably not from its sweetness, although it is good eating.

She had added to the gift a small crab, but that he had carried to the seashore and set free, because it was alive.

These, the half-cookie, the turnip, and the dulse, with the smell of the baker's bread, was all he had had.