The Tale of Old Mr. Crow

XV

MR. CROW'S NEW COAT

When Mr. Crow de­cid­ed, one fall, that he would stay in Pleas­ant Val­ley dur­ing the win­ter, in­stead of go­ing South, he re­mem­bered at once that he would need a thick over­coat.

That was when he went to Mr. Frog's tai­lor's shop, for Mr. Frog, you know, was a tai­lor.

“I want you to make me a warm over­coat.” Mr. Crow told him. “Can you do it?”

“Cer­tain­ly!” said Mr. Frog. “You've come to the right place. Ev­ery­body says that I'm the best tai­lor in Pleas­ant Val­ley.” And that was quite true--be­cause he was the _on­ly_ one. “What'll you have--stripes, checks, or spots?” Mr. Frog asked briskly.

“What do you sug­gest?” Mr. Crow replied. He had not thought much about his new coat--ex­cept that he want­ed it to be warm.

“Spots, by all means!” said Mr. Frog. “I al­ways wear 'em my­self. They're the best, to my mind. For if you hap­pen to get a spot on your coat, what's one spot more?”

“That's a good idea,” Mr. Crow said. “And how much will you ask to make me a spot­ted coat?”

“I charge by the spot,” said Mr. Frog. “The more spots, the more the coat will cost. So I'd ad­vise you to take a coat with large spots, be­cause there'll be few­er of 'em and the price will be less.”

“That's a good idea, too,” said old Mr. Crow. “You may make my coat of this!” He point­ed to a piece of blue cloth with yel­low spots about the size of a dol­lar and a quar­ter.

“Good!” said Mr. Frog. Then he mea­sured Mr. Crow. And then he mea­sured the cloth. And then he scratched some fig­ures on a flat stone. “There'll be thir­teen spots on your coat and that'll make just thir­teen that you'll owe me.”

“Thir­teen what?” asked Mr. Crow.

“Ah! That's the ques­tion!” said Mr. Frog, mys­te­ri­ous­ly. “I'll tell you when your coat's fin­ished. And you can pay me then. It's what is known as 'spot cash,'” he added.

“Very well!” Mr. Crow an­swered. “And I'll come back--”

“To-​mor­row!” said the tai­lor.

When to-​mor­row came, Mr. Crow flew over to the pond where Mr. Frog had his tai­lor's shop. And that spry gen­tle­man slipped Mr. Crow's new coat up­on him. While Mr. Crow stood stiffly in the mid­dle of the floor Mr. Frog pulled the coat here and pat­ted it there. He backed away and looked at it, with his head on one side; and then he stood on his head and looked at it, with his legs dan­gling in the air.

“It's a per­fect fit,” he as­sured Mr. Crow, fi­nal­ly. And then he caught up a nee­dle and thread and bus­ied him­self be­hind Mr. Crow's back for a long time.

“What are you do­ing?” Mr. Crow in­quired at last. “I'm get­ting tired of stand­ing still.”

“Just fix­ing it!” an­swered Mr. Frog. “It'll be fin­ished in a minute.”

And it was. He stuck his nee­dle in­to Mr. Crow, to let him know it was done.

Mr. Crow jumped half way across the room. “Why did you do that?” he asked hot­ly.

“I want­ed to break my thread,” Mr. Frog ex­plained pleas­ant­ly. “It's the quick­est way of break­ing a thread that I know of.”

“You look out, or I'll break some­thing else for you,” Mr. Crow squawked, for he was thor­ough­ly en­raged. “And now,” he added, “I'll pay you what I owe be­fore leav­ing. I owe thir­teen of some­thing.”

Then Mr. Frog sur­prised him.

“I've de­cid­ed not to take any pay,” he an­nounced. “I hear that thir­teen is an un­lucky num­ber.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Frog ex­claimed. “Per­haps it is. If you had stuck your nee­dle in­to me thir­teen times it cer­tain­ly would have been un­lucky for you.”

On the whole Mr. Crow was well pleased with his bar­gain. He was glad that he had asked Mr. Frog to make a coat for him. In­deed, if on­ly the tai­lor had not stabbed him with his nee­dle, he would have re­turned to the shop at once and or­dered Mr. Frog to make him a pair of trousers--with thir­teen spots on them.