THE HEADLESS MAN
The burned tailor shop had stopped smoking but there was still a crowd around the ruins and the queer little tailor was still hopping about and talking of his loss. He was a thin man with big glasses and very bushy hair. It stood straight up under his hat and looked almost like the splints on the broom that Tommy had made into a make-believe tailor. Tommy and Muffs and Mary edged closer to hear what he was saying.
“Twenty pair of pants!” he said sorrowfully.
“What’s he talking about?” Tommy asked an older boy.
The boy grinned. “Twenty pair of pants.”
“We heard that. But what about them?”
“He burned them up,” answered the boy. Then he looked at Tommy. “Sa-ay! Aren’t you the fellow who turned in the alarm? Come and I’ll show you.”
So the big boy led the way through the ruins of the tailor shop. It wasn’t very safe but nobody was paying any attention to that. Muffs touched the blackened wood as they passed and thought of the charcoal that her mother used to draw pictures with. She broke off a piece and drew a picture on the back of the big boy’s white shirt.