"I should hope it's your worst," the tailor said rudely. "What sort
of stuff is that to make a man happy?"
"To make a man happy!" echoed the boy, his heart sinking within him.
"If you have no news to give me, why should I pay for your songs! I
want to hear about my neighbours, about their lives, and their wives
and their sins. There's the fat baker up the street--they say he
cheats the poor with light bread. Make me a song of that, and I'll
give you some breakfast. Or there's the magistrate at the top of the
hill who made the girl drown herself last week. That's a poetic
subject."
"What's all this!" said the boy disdainfully. "Can't you make dirt
enough for yourself!"
"You with your stuff about birds," shouted the tailor; "you're a rank
impostor! That's what you are!"
"They say that you are the ninth part of a man, but I find that they
have grossly exaggerated," cried the boy, in retort; but he had
a heavy heart as he made off along the street.
By noon he had interviewed the butcher, the cobbler, the milkman, and
the maker of candlesticks, but they treated him no better than the
tailor had done, and as he was feeling tired he went and sat down
under a tree.
"I begin to think that the baker is the best of the lot of them," he
said to himself ruefully, as he rolled his empty wallet between his
fingers.
Then, as the folly of singers provides them in some measure with a
philosophy, he fell asleep.
III
When he woke it was late in the afternoon, and the children, fresh
from school, had come out to play in the dusk.
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