Mr. Cockey nodded towards the garment.
"You'm always as good as your word, I'm sure," said Harvey Woodman, "though how them fat hands of yours—as look more like bunches of parsnips than hands—can do such finnicky work makes me wonder."
"Ah, I dare say a lot of things make you wonder," answered the tailor. "Not but what I envy you your way of life, for 'tis healthier'n mine. You chaps, as till the earth, have no time to fret your intellects like what I do. Ploughmen never band together and make trouble in the world. Tailors be a very thinking race; but you'll not find they takes a hopeful view of human nature."
"Then they'm small-minded," said Beer firmly; "for, looked at all round, human nature be a very hopeful thing."
Mordecai Cockey sighed.
"You may be in the right. Perhaps building of clothes do narrow the heart, for we grow apt to think 'tis our feathers make the birds. For that matter the world counts us but light. We'm slighted tradesmen, we tailors. They say it takes nine of us to make a man; though it only takes one to get a long family, as I know to my cost. Thirteen children have I, an' all with the tailoring spirit in 'em except my eldest son."
"An' what might he be doing?" asked Putt.
"Well, he's a baker."
"A very honest trade."
"That's just what it ban't," declared Mr. Cockey. "They'm sly as lawyers; an' there's a damned sight more in bread than corn nowadays. A man may be eating his own great gran'faither; as I've said openly down to Totnes, an' nobody contradicted me.