"It's a great pity," said the baker; "he seems a decent young chap."
"He has nice eyes," said the baker's wife.
As the boy passed down the street he frowned a little.
"What is the matter with them?" he wondered. "They're pleasant people enough, and yet they did not want to hear my songs."
Presently he came to the tailor's shop, and as the tailor had sharper eyes than the baker, he saw the pipe in the boy's pocket.
"Hullo, piper!" he called. "My legs are stiff. Come and sing us a song!"
The boy looked up and saw the tailor sitting cross-legged in the open window of his shop.
"What sort of song would you like?" he asked.
"Oh! the latest," replied the tailor. "We don't want any old songs here." So the boy sung his new song of the kingfisher in the water-meadow and the cuckoo who had overslept itself.
"And what do you call that?" asked the tailor angrily, when the boy had finished.