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"If you do not stop your impertinence, I will shear off your ears like cloth clippings!" retorted the angry tailor. "Goose and cabbage! man; you shall not trifle with me!" On this the landlord and waiters turned him bodily out of the house, after seizing upon all his remaining money; and the moment he was in the street, the knowledge of how he had betrayed himself broke upon his mind.
"We are going over prairie which affords easy riding. We've got nothing to fear unless some lamb strays from the Mexican flock, and blunders upon us. Even then he's more likely to be shorn than to shear." They advanced for some time, guided by the hoofbeats from the Mexican column. But before the sun could rise and dispel the fog the sound of the hoofbeats ceased.
To them he only stated that he had found several promising clues and was following them as rapidly as possible, but it all cost money, and would they kindly send a draft on account for necessary expenses? etc., etc. To shear them as close as possible and as long as he could before giving any return for their money was part of his game.
Hard tasks both, it would appear. In accomplishing the first, for example, have not heaven-born Chancellors of the Exchequer had to shear us very bare; and to leave an overplus of Debt, or of fleeces shorn before they are grown, justly esteemed among the wonders of the world? Not a first-rate keeping of the peace, this, we begin to surmise! At least it seems strange to us.
I consider that you've done your work very well, and behaved very well all through. You're a fast shearer, but you shear closely, and don't knock your sheep about. I therefore do not charge you for any part of your meat bill, and I pay you at the rate of half-a-crown a hundred for all your sheep, over and above your agreement. Will that do?"
"Yes, yes," answered the father, "I'll shear every one of you." All laughed but the little one; which, half frightened, hid its sunny-haired little head on the mother's bosom: the father raised it gently, and kissed, first it, and then the mother. "Now put sugar in papa's cup," said she to the little one; "look! he holds it to you."
"Great distress, I fear, Edie," answered Miss Wardour; "but I am surprised it is already so public." "Public! Sweepclean, the messenger, will be there the day wi' a' his tackle. I ken it frae ane o' his concurrents, as they ca' them, that's warned to meet him; and they'll be about their wark belyve; whare they clip, there needs nae kame they shear close eneugh."
And the family knew his feet were itching and his brain was tingling with the old madness, when he lifted his hoarse-cracked voice, now falsetto-cracked, in: Like Argus of the ancient times, We leave this modern Greece, Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum, To shear the Golden Fleece.
Even in England and America, where personal liberty of action is most prized, time was when statutes were enacted almost putting people and business in strait-jackets. In English Norfolk as late as Henry VIII's time no one was to "dye, shear or calender" cloth except in the town of Norwich; and no one in the northern counties was to make "worsted coverlets" except in the city of York.
Mighty was the shout of yea-say that arose at that word; and when it was stilled, a grey-head stood up and said: "King Christopher, and thou, our leader, whom we shall henceforth call Earl, it is now meet that we shear up the war-arrow, and send it forth to whithersoever we deem our friends dwell, and that this be done at once here in this Mote, and that the hosting be after three nights' frist in the plain of Hazeldale, which all ye know is twelve miles nigher to Oakenrealm than this."
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