“See, Eyebrows!” cried the first. “The Shears of Sharpness!”
The Blind Ballad Singer Displays the Shears of Sharpness
He drew from under his gown a pair of tailor’s shears, and as he did so the crowd fell back as if in alarm. He stepped toward the city wall, and placed his hand on a flat iron bar, some two or three inches in width, supporting an awning over a booth; and applying his shears to it, he cut it through and through as if it had been paper. I gasped in amazement; never had I seen a pair of shears like those.
“The Shears for the lady!” cried the blind man. “Come, Eyebrows, choose!”
“Impudent rascal,” said I, “the lady is my daughter, and I foresee that a good scourging is awaiting you. Come, Amadore!”
“But buy our ballads!” cried the second ballad singer. “Buy our ballads!” cried the others, and each of the three thrust toward me one of his papers.
I took them, and paying over a few coppers, moved on toward the city gate. “Father!” said Amadore in my ear. “The boy is gone!”
It was true. The boy had slipped away, and was gone. The idlers began to laugh again, and I drew my daughter after me into the city.
In a moment we were standing in a street of shops, and my daughter, laughing again, begged me to read my ballads. I glanced at the sheets, still angry, and was about to toss them away, when I observed that they were blank, or nearly so, and I looked at them more closely.
On the first were written these words, and nothing more: “Hurry. Hurry.”