Nobody would have believed that Simon’s old, crooked fingers could handle a knife so cleverly. In no time the pattern on the old shoe had been copied exactly on the new one. When Crispin had stitched the blue cut-work border on both, and Simon had rubbed the new leather on some old scraps and cleaned the old a bit, the two little shoes looked like twins.
“Is there a boy here named Crispin Eyre?” inquired a man’s voice from the doorway. Almost at the same time came the sweet lilting speech of a little girl, “Oh, father, that is the boy who was so kind to me!”
Crispin and old Simon stood up and bowed, for the man who spoke was a dignified person in the furred cloak and cap of a well-to-do merchant. The little girl held fast to her father’s hand and gazed into the shop with bright interest. “Look at the shoes, father, aren’t they pretty?”
The merchant balanced the little shoes in his broad hand. “Which did you lose, Genevieve, child?”
“I—I don’t know, father,” the child said, pursing her soft lips. “Cannot you tell?”
“By my faith,” said the merchant thoughtfully, “if a London shoemaker’s boy does work like this I doubt Edrupt may be right when he says our ten fingers are as good as any. This shoe is one of a pair from Cordova. Who’s your father, lad?”
“My father is Thomas Eyre, so please you, master,” said the boy proudly, “and I am Crispin.”
“A good craft and a good name and a good workman,” said the merchant, and dropped a coin into the litter of leather scraps. It was the full price of a new pair of shoes.
Crispin certainly could not have dreamed that his kindness to little Genevieve Gay would be the occasion of new streets in London, but it happened so. Master Gay, the merchant, came later to talk with Thomas Eyre about the shoe trade. Then, instead of sending a cargo of Irish hides abroad he gave Eyre the choice of them. Other shoemakers took the rest, the shoe trade of London grew, and so did the tanneries. The tanners presently needed more room by running water, and sought new quarters outside London Wall. The business of London kept on growing until the Leatherworkers’ Guild had presently to send abroad for their own raw material. England became more and more a manufacturing country and less a farming country. In one or another trade almost every farming product was of use. Hides were made into leather, beef went to the cook-shops; horn was made into drinking-cups and lantern-lights, bones were ground or burnt for various purposes, tallow made candles. What the farmer had been used to do for himself on his farm, the Guilds began to do in companies, and their farm was England.