“What’s this?” asked Mary. She kicked something hard that lay on the burned place where the floor boards used to be.
“It’s his iron!” exclaimed Tommy. “I’d like to bet that’s what started the fire.”
He picked it up and ran outside to show the tailor but the tailor had gone. Everybody had gone except a few children who took turns holding the iron to see how heavy it was. It was pretty heavy for any of them to carry but Muffs had an idea. She took off the hair ribbon that she was wearing Alice-in-Wonderland style about her head and tied one end of it through the holes in the iron where the handle, if it hadn’t burned up, was supposed to go.
“Now it’s a duck,” she said. “It’s Fannie Flatbreast.”
She pulled the duck about the ruins of the tailor shop and its flat breast sounded clank! clank! whenever they went over a crack.
The next discovery was an old broom. It was made of fibre and only a part of it had burned. The red strings that bound the fibres together looked even more like a mouth than the strings on Tommy’s broom in the workshop. The Bramble Bush Man’s glasses provided eyes and made the creature look wondrous wise as well. Tommy hid himself behind the broom and made believe it was the tailor. He was hopping around, nodding his head and explaining the fire to a group of play customers when along came a real customer. He stood still for a moment, then muttered something to himself and turned to go away.
“Look at him!” called all the children. Several of them pointed their fingers at his back with oh’s and ah’s of surprise. Muffs skated to the burned door of the shop with Fannie Flatbreast and what she saw was the strangest sight on earth.
“Why, he hasn’t any head,” she squealed. “He hasn’t any, any, any, any head!”
