The shoe that Crispin was making was of a different sort. It was a little round-toed sturdy thing, about the right size for a child of ten. The mate to it was on the bench at his side, and he put them together and looked at them rather ruefully. The shoe he had made was plain, and the other was trimmed daintily with red morocco and cut in a quaint round pattern on the toe—the decoration that was known as “a Paul’s window,” because the geometric cut-work with the colored lining looked like stained glass. Crispin frowned and shook his head.
“What’s ailin’ ye, lad?” Old Simon peered at the shoes in the boy’s hands. “Bless ye, those ben’t mates!”
“I know that, but I haven’t any colored leather for this one even if I knew how to finish it,” Crispin said with a sigh.
“Um-m-m!” Simon looked more closely at the little gay shoe. “That never came from these parts. That’s Turkey leather.” He gave Crispin a sharp glance. The great bell of Bow was ringing and the apprentices were quitting work. “Where did this shoe come from, now?”
Crispin hesitated. “Don’t you tell, now, Simon. I found a little maid crying in Candlewick street—standing on one foot like a duck because she had lost her other shoe. She was so light I could lift her up, and I set her on a wall while I looked for the shoe, but it wasn’t any good, for a horse had stepped on it. She cried so about the shoe that I—I said I would make her another. And then her father came back for her and took her away.”
“Who might she be?” inquired Simon dryly.
“I don’t know. I didn’t tell father. She said she would send for the shoes though.”
Simon had been rummaging in a leather bag behind his bench. “If she don’t there’s plenty of other little wenches that wear shoes. If the leather should be blue in place o’ red, would that matter?”
“I shouldn’t think so; one shoe is no good alone.” Crispin began to be hopeful.
Old Simon pulled out some pieces of soft fine leather the color of a harebell and began to cut them quickly and deftly into fine scalloped borders. “This ben’t Turkey leather, but it is a piece from Spain, and they learnt the trade of the paynim, so I reckon ’twill do. Stitch this on the other shoe in place o’ the red, and I’ll cut the pattern.”