Page:Beatrix Potter - The Tailor of Gloucester.djvu/64

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58
The Tailor of Gloucester

But it was all rather provoking to poor hungry Simpkin.

Particularly he was vexed with some little shrill voices from behind a wooden lattice. I think that they were bats, because they always have very small voices—especially in a black frost, when they talk in their sleep, like the Tailor of Gloucester.

They said something mysterious that sounded like—

"Buzz, quoth the blue fly; hum, quoth the bee;
Buzz and hum they cry, and so do we!"

and Simpkin went away shaking his ears as if he had a bee in his bonnet.

From the tailor's shop in Westgate came a glow of light; and when Simpkin crept up to peep in at the window