Three apricots lay split on the stall board. The flesh had gone soft at the stone, and the board kept a sweet stain in its grain from some earlier day when the fruit had been better and the knife had been cleaner. Nell Arden wiped her thumb on the apron and got more juice than cloth. The apron was patched at the hip with blue sackcloth, stiff at the seam, and the brass stall stamp sat in the hidden pocket with two coins, a chalk nub, and the stem of a pear she meant to toss later. She always meant to toss things later. Useful habit. The square had just begun to fill. Crates bumped, awnings snapped open, a cart wheel grated over the stones with a sound like a spoon dragged through a basin, and one man in a felt hat stood too near the onions as if he had paid rent to the smell. Nell had sold fruit long enough for the same faces to repeat their tricks. The crate slats under her palm had a burr on one edge that snagged the cloth at her wrist, and she had to lift her hand and smooth it down again before she made the skin there red. Jude arrived with one crate on his shoulder and another argument already set up behind his teeth. He set the crate down crooked and said, "These two are bruised but ambitious." The buyer in front of the stall, a broad woman with flour on her cuffs, turned one apricot over in her hand and said it looked like it had been in a fight and lost. "Six coppers for the good ones," Jude said. He had the kind of voice that made every sentence sound checked by a clerk. Nell put her hand on the crate edge. "Five for the lot," she said, and the woman looked from one sibling to the other as if the stall had offered her a play with no rehearsal. Jude gave Nell a side glance that begged for a little room. She gave him none. The woman paid for two and walked off with the one least bruised, which was how bargaining always managed to insult everybody and keep moving. Marta Sile crossed the square on the far side of the fish stall, all clean sleeves and a basket lined with paper, and lifted two fingers in greeting that had the shape of an insult. "If you are selling regret by the pound, I can beat that price," she called. "Only if your scales are broken," Jude said. He said it with too much pleasure. The woman with flour on her cuffs made a sound that might have been a laugh or a cough and left her coin in the tray anyway. Too early for dignity. Nell slid the coins under the board, then back out again to count them where Jude could not reach, because if she let him touch the tray he would start treating the day as a public sport. The city bell at the end of the square gave one hard note. More buyers came. Trouble liked an open stall.