The shoemaker bowed himself out with the left shoe.
At eleven, punctual as a creditor, arrived the second predestined victim. The same scene was repeated; but this time it was the right shoe that did not fit.
“You will have to put it over the last again, my friend.”
“We’ll soon set that right, sir.” And this shoemaker, more knowing than the other, was about to take both shoes away with him.
“Leave the other,” said the Bari man. “It’s a fancy of mine ... if you take them both, some one may come in and find that they fit him, and you will sell them to him, and I shall have to wait another week.”
“But I assure you, sir——”
“No, no, my friend; I know how things go. I want this pair of shoes and no other, and I insist on keeping the one.” The shoemaker bowed his head with a sigh, and went away to stretch the right shoe.
An hour later the Bari man and his shoes were already on board the Piræus steamer; and on the following day the two victims met on his doorstep, each with a shoe in his hand, and looked into each other’s rapidly lengthening faces.
Napoleone Corazzini.