The Tailor of Gloucester (3 page)

Out of doors the market folks went trudging through the snow to buy their geese and
turkeys, and to bake their Christmas pies; but there would be no Christmas dinner for Simpkin and the poor
old Tailor of Gloucester.

The tailor lay ill for three days and nights; and then it was Christmas Eve, and very
late at night. The moon climbed up over the roofs and chimneys, and looked down over the gateway into
College Court. There were no lights in the windows, nor any sound in the houses; all the city of Gloucester
was fast asleep under the snow.

And still Simpkin wanted his mice, and he mewed as he stood beside the four-post
bed.

But it is in the old story that all the beasts can talk, in the night between
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know
what it is that they say).

When the Cathedral clock struck twelve there was an answer — like an echo of the
chimes — and Simpkin heard it, and came out of the tailor’s door, and wandered about in the snow.

From all the roofs and gables and old wooden houses in Gloucester came a thousand
merry voices singing the old Christmas rhymes — all the old songs that ever I heard of, and some that I
don’t know, like Whittington’s bells.

First and loudest the cocks cried out — “Dame, get up, and bake your pies!”

“Oh, dilly, dilly, dilly!” sighed Simpkin.

And now in a garret there were lights and sounds of dancing, and cats came from over
the way.

“Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle! All the cats in Gloucester — except me,”
said Simpkin.

Under the wooden eaves the starlings and sparrows sang of Christmas pies; the
jack-daws woke up in the Cathedral tower; and although it was the middle of the night the throstles and
robins sang; the air was quite full of little twittering tunes.

But it was all rather provoking to poor hungry Simpkin!

Particularly he was vexed with some little shrill voices from behind a wooden lattice.
I think that they were bats, because they always have very small voices — especially in a black frost, when
they talk in their sleep, like the Tailor of Gloucester.

They said something mysterious that sounded like —

and Simpkin went away shaking his ears as if he had a bee in his bonnet.

From the tailor’s shop in Westgate came a glow of light; and when Simpkin crept up to
peep in at the window it was full of candles.

There was a snippeting
of scissors, and snappeting of thread; and little mouse voices sang loudly and gaily —

Then without a pause the little mouse voices went on again —

“Mew! Mew!” interrupted Simpkin, and he scratched at the door.

But the key was under the tailor’s pillow; he could not get in.

The little mice only laughed, and tried another tune —

“Mew! Mew!” cried Simpkin. “Hey diddle dinketty?” answered the little mice —

They clicked their thimbles to mark the time, but none of the songs pleased Simpkin; he sniffed and mewed at the door of the shop.

and upon the kitchen dresser!” added the rude little mice.

“Mew! scratch! scratch!” scuffled Simpkin on the window-sill; while the little mice
inside sprang to their feet, and all began to shout at once in little twittering voices — “No more twist! No
more twist!” And they barred up the window shutters and shut out Simpkin.

But still through the nicks in the shutters he could hear the click of thimbles, and little mouse voices singing —

“No more twist! No more twist!”

Simpkin came away from the shop and went home, considering in his mind. He found the
poor old tailor without fever, sleeping peacefully.

Then Simpkin went on tip-toe and took a little parcel of silk out of the tea-pot, and
looked at it in the moonlight; and he felt quite ashamed of his badness compared with those good little
mice!

When the tailor awoke in the morning, the first thing which he saw, upon the patchwork
quilt, was a skein of cherry-coloured twisted silk, and beside his bed stood the repentant Simpkin!