The Tailor of Gloucester

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets — when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta — there lived a tailor in Gloucester. He sat in the window of a little shop in Westgate Street, cross-legged on a table, from morning to night. He sewed and snippeted, and his fingers were worn to the bone. He was very, very poor — a little old man in spectacles, with a pinched face, old crooked fingers, and a suit of threadbare clothes. But the work he did was beautiful. All day long he cut and stitched silk and satin and cherry-coloured twist, making the finest coats and waistcoats in all the city.

Now the Mayor of Gloucester was to be married on Christmas morning, and he had ordered a coat of cherry-coloured silk, embroidered with pansies and roses, and lined with cream-coloured satin. The old tailor worked and worked. He cut the silk very carefully and laid out every piece upon the table. He measured the satin for the lining. He counted his threads — cherry, gold, and cream. But there was not quite enough cherry-coloured twist to finish the coat. Not a single strand more, and the shops would all be shut for Christmas. The tailor was distressed. He locked up the shop and went home to his little house, feeling very worried indeed. "No more twist," he murmured.

He lived with his cat, whose name was Simpkin. The tailor gave Simpkin his last penny and sent him out to buy food and a twist of cherry-coloured silk. While Simpkin was away, the tailor heard a strange little noise — tip tap, tip tap, tip tap. Under the teacups on the dresser, he found three little mice, trapped beneath the china. The kind old tailor set them free, one by one. When Simpkin came back and found that his mice had been released, he was furious. Cats do not like to lose their mice. In his spite, Simpkin hid the twist of cherry-coloured silk and would not tell the tailor where it was.

That night, the tailor grew very ill. He tossed and turned in his bed, mumbling about the coat. "No more twist! No more twist!" he cried in his fever. Outside, the city of Gloucester was white with snow. The cathedral bells rang for Christmas, and the streets were silent. But in the little tailor's shop, something was stirring. Under the door, through the cracks and the keyholes, the little mice of Gloucester came creeping in. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. They had heard about the coat that must be finished by morning. They remembered the old tailor who had set their friends free. And they had come to help.

All through Christmas Eve, the tiny mice worked by candlelight. They sat cross-legged upon the table, just as the old tailor sat. Their little paws stitched and sewed with the most extraordinary skill. They used the finest needles, no bigger than a pin. They sang as they worked, in high, thin voices: "No more twist! No more twist!" For indeed, there was not enough cherry-coloured twist to finish the last buttonhole. The mice sewed everything else — the embroidered roses, the padded lapels, the cream satin lining, the tiny covered buttons — but the very last buttonhole they could not complete.

On Christmas morning, the tailor rose from his sickbed and walked through the snow to his shop. Simpkin followed, and upon the doorstep, feeling ashamed of his meanness, the cat laid down the little twist of cherry-coloured silk. The tailor opened the door and could not believe his eyes. There upon the table lay the most beautiful coat he had ever seen. Every stitch was perfect. Every rose was exquisite. The satin lining gleamed like cream. Only one thing remained undone — a single buttonhole, left unfinished with a little note beside it, written in the tiniest of handwriting: "No more twist." The tailor finished the last buttonhole himself, with the cherry-coloured silk that Simpkin had brought. And the Mayor of Gloucester was married in the finest coat ever made, on the happiest Christmas Day the city could remember. The tailor grew rich and prosperous, and he made the most wonderful waistcoats for all the finest gentlemen in the West of England. But his buttonholes were the greatest wonder of all. And the stitches of those buttonholes were so small — so small — they looked as if they had been made by little mice.