THE house occupied by the new supervisor of excise lay up a narrow cobbled croft, turning sharp from the Fullergate by the “Fullers’ Arms.” It was, in reality, half of what had once been a considerable house, extending along the top of the croft; but the right-hand portion had for long been boarded and shuttered, and a pear-tree, planted by design or lack of thought close to the wall, divided the two portions. The lower part of the tree grew of necessity outwards; but at the eaves it spread back and embowered in its branches two dormer windows. Between the cobbles of the croft grass grew; the place was retired and quiet; and on the roof-flags pigeons crooned and flirted and made white droppings.
The shop of Cole the clogger was in the extreme corner, adjoining the supervisor’s house. It lay in the basement, reached by half a dozen stone steps down a sort of well, and its window was flush with the grass and the cobbles. Thus, appropriately enough, the clogger was able to recognise his visitors by that portion of their attire that was in many cases his own handiwork. There was no mistaking the calliper-legs of Pim o’ Cuddy, the darned blue worsted that cased Mish Murgatroyd’s shins, the vast calf-muscles of Big Monjoy, nor the pudding ankles of fat Dooina Benn, the clogger’s sister.
A facetious soul, Cole the clogger was, and apparently a well-beloved by his neighbours. He was seldom without visitors, on his steps, on the bench within his door, or supporting his outer wall. As he shaped the wooden soles in his vice, or with his cobbler’s knife carved the stiff uppers, Cole ever declared that the odour of the leather that soaked in his tubs of black water was as good for the lungs as his sister’s gentian, and none who wore his clogs (he vowed) suffered from toothache or neuralgia.
Fond of animals Cole was, too. On his bench a profligate magpie harped on the wires of his cage, and over the leather thong that held his knives and awls and pincers there were always three or four pigeons in wicker cages—plain homers, that knew their way to Holdsworth and Brotherton and Booth. Should a man from one of these places be interested in (say) the Horwick weather, it was easily arranged that the tossing up of a blue or black or mixed bird should mean that there was thunder about, or that rain was likely; while if you were able to write, you could convey, with as much detail as you pleased, the state of the atmosphere or the set of the wind. The pigeons were frequently changed. The clogger’s shop was known as “The Gazette.”
Cole the clogger had one gift that endeared him to his gossiping neighbours, and to Back o’ th’ Mooin especially—that of mimicry; and Cole vowed that no such pair of legs as the supervisor’s had ever passed his window. The clogger recognised the chance of his lifetime.
“Eh!” he cried one day, to one or two laughter-loving souls gathered in his basement, “but he pods down th’ croft like I can’t tell ye what—sitha!” He ducked his head into his fat shoulders, crooked his knees, and began to make a little creeping perambulation among his tubs of soaking leather. “Pit, pat, pit, pat—like a cat on a hot bak’stone—and his laugh—a sort of whinney—‘Hn! hn!’ like summat snapping i’ th’ bridge of his nose. A haw on his eyes an’ all——”
Then the clogger was seized with a rare idea.
“By Gow! I can just show ye! Pass me my coat!” he cried.
He got them to button the coat about his shoulders, with his arms inside and the sleeves empty and dangling. Then on his hands he thrust a pair of clogs. He puffed his cheeks out, blinked rapidly with his eyes, and began to waddle with his hands up and down his bench.
Roars of laughter broke out. That, to be sure, was just Cope—Cope to a T! It was a’most worth sending a pigeon off for. Cole would never beat that!—And Cole, in an artist’s transport, practised little variations.