Over his breakfast the boy talked wisely on art, as is the wont of
young singers, and afterwards he went on his way down the street.
"It's a great pity," said the baker; "he seems a decent young chap."
"He has nice eyes," said the baker's wife.
As the boy passed down the street he frowned a little.
"What is the matter with them?" he wondered. "They're pleasant people
enough, and yet they did not want to hear my songs."
Presently he came to the tailor's shop, and as the tailor had sharper
eyes than the baker, he saw the pipe in the boy's pocket.
"Hullo, piper!" he called. "My legs are stiff. Come and sing us a
song!"
The boy looked up and saw the tailor sitting cross-legged in the open
window of his shop.
"What sort of song would you like?" he asked.
"Oh! the latest," replied the tailor. "We don't want any old songs
here." So the boy sung his new song of the kingfisher in the
water-meadow and the cuckoo who had overslept itself.
"And what do you call that?" asked the tailor angrily, when the boy
had finished.
"It's my new song, but I don't think it's one of my best." But in his
heart the boy believed it was, because he had only just made it.
"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.