He sat in the window of a little shop in Westgate Street, cross-legged on
a table, from morning till dark.

All day long while the light lasted he sewed and snippeted, piecing out
his satin and pompadour, and lutestring; stuffs had strange names, and
were very expensive in the days of the Tailor of Gloucester.

But although he sewed fine silk for his neighbours, he himself was very,
very poor--a little old man in spectacles, with a pinched face, old
crooked fingers, and a suit of thread-bare clothes.

He cut his coats without waste, according to his embroidered cloth; they
were very small ends and snippets that lay about upon the table--"Too
narrow breadths for nought--except waistcoats for mice," said the tailor.

[Illustration]

One bitter cold day near Christmastime the tailor began to make a coat--a
coat of cherry-coloured corded silk embroidered with pansies and roses,
and a cream coloured satin waistcoat--trimmed with gauze and green
worsted chenille--for the Mayor of Gloucester.

[Illustration]

The tailor worked and worked, and he talked to himself. He measured the
silk, and turned it round and round, and trimmed it into shape with his
shears; the table was all littered with cherry-coloured snippets.

"No breadth at all, and cut on the cross; it is no breadth at all; tippets