The Secret Code of Monsters.

Chapter 28 William the Shoemaker
Mr. William Cordone's shop is filled with a wide variety of hand-made shoes and boots.

This young shoemaker has excellent craftsmanship, but due to the recent succession of factories approaching, his business has hit rock bottom - of course, in my uncle's opinion, this is not the bottom yet.

He 'estimated' that if William Cordoni did not give up his family's craft, he would not be able to guarantee even two meals a day within two years.

Poor Alice.

Roland brought him two bottles of unlabeled wine from the nearest small market, and bought Alice a few small bags of strawberry candy balls, a standard four-pound loaf of bread, and a red bow tie.

It is worth mentioning that:
Roland gets more discounts on shopping than his uncle.

Much.

Although the reasons used by women and men are: Forget it, who doesn’t get sick and doesn’t take medicine?

But old Collins never had such treatment.

The shoe shop is not far from the pharmacy. It is a single-story building with an awl and a leather boot painted on the door, and the name "William's Shoe Shop" is marked on it.

The fence outside the door was covered with brown leather, and there was a dirty little doormat at the door.

There was a half gap at the corner of the side wall where it met the roof, and it was blocked with new mud and stones wrapped in grass.

William Cordoni lived here with his daughter Alice.

Don't think they are shabby, Mr. Cordoni and Roland's uncle are considered the "rich people" on this street.

They are people with property, very special, and they walk with their heads held high.

"Sir, I brought some wine."

When he invited the man into the house, the shoemaker showed a rare look of embarrassment.

The room is too messy.

There were waste leather and tools everywhere under his feet, and Roland had to wade through them slowly.

Three walls of the room were lined with wooden shelves holding finished and half-finished shoes.

A huge, queer shoe-making machine took up half the room, and around it were heaps of sawdust and splinters mixed together.

There was a smell of wood and leather in the room, which was hard to say whether it was pleasant or not.

William Cordoni just stood there awkwardly in the room, enthusiastically…

Rub hands.

It was Alice who took the initiative to receive Roland.

"Roland!"

"Hey, are you feeling better?"

"I can even jump! What did you bring me... candy! Dad! Roland brought me candy!"

Alice was crunching the candy bag and winking at her father - William felt that his daughter understood human nature better than he did.

"You should call me brother, or sir, Alice."

Roland half-knelt down in front of Alice, fumbled around, and tied the little red bow tie on her collar. He patted the girl's head and smiled: "You can call me a guard, little princess."

"Roland! It's tied the wrong way around!"

"Hey, Princess, do you dislike the fact that your guard is blind now?"

"Giggle cluck..."

He came to visit today, apparently for an exam later:

Heart anchor.

He has already decided on the style of his heart anchor.

The reason why I found Mr. William instead of the blacksmith was that my uncle and I had a common idea: we wanted to find some work for the shoemaker.

Roland handed him the small silver ingot he had prepared, and asked him to measure the size of his left little finger.

"It won't take half an hour."

He skillfully padded the metal in his hand, turned around and squatted to look in the toolbox in the corner.

Here, Roland sat on a chair, listening to Alice chattering about the latest happenings of the day.

"Rick Rich was bragging yesterday about how his dad got a good job on the boulevard..."

"Roland, what is an angel?"

“I want to be a pastry chef when I grow up!”

"Have you heard the story that's been going around lately?"

Chirping like a happy little bird.

"Pastry chef?"

Roland opened his mouth and let the bird feed him a strawberry candy ball, which he held in his mouth. In order to express the sweetness, he also made an exaggerated expression, which made the girl laugh continuously.

"Well... pastry chef, this isn't cheap. Alice, your dad has to work hard."

“Not cheap?”

Alice stroked her frizzy brown hair, tilting her head as she spoke, picking the wood chips out of her hair. "Not cheap? I heard you can make a lot of money, and it's pretty easy."

Can you make a lot of money?
He must be a well-known pastry chef in the West District. He can make a lot of money by serving those ladies.

As for easy...

There is no easy job in the market.

Even the executive that Enid introduced to her would have to face dangerous things in the future.

"real."

Alice smiled brightly and said in a clear, sharp voice: "Thomson said that his mother is a pastry chef!"

Thompson was Rick Rich's henchman, and Roland didn't have much communication with him.

This man's family background has always been vague.

"A pastry chef who lives in the East End?"

The man rummaging through the boxes snorted, turned his back to his daughter and said in a low voice: "Don't listen to what those wild boys say. Except for Roland, they are all idiots."

"I bet there would be no 'Except Roland' if you weren't here."
-
You have to understand the ways of the world.

"I want to be a pastry chef!" Alice jumped up and down: "He said that his mother only needs to receive three or four people who come to buy cakes every night, and her weekly income is more than his father's! And it's very easy..."

Every night…

Home visit?

The man who bought the cake?

Roland could imagine that the shoemaker's expression was probably as bad as his own.

as predicted.

A pair of pliers was smashed to the ground.

Bang!
He turned around angrily and glared at his daughter: "Your mother and I worked so hard to make money just for you--"

Let you...

Let you do...

His lips moved, unable to utter the next vicious words. He suddenly felt sad, and his gray eyes were filled with tears.

The man looked at his daughter and the daughter looked at her father.

He may have thought about his daughter's future fate, but his daughter was just afraid of her father's sudden rage...

"You scared her."

Roland held the sobbing girl in his arms and stroked her rough and prickly long hair.

…………

……

Roland's heart anchor is a ring.

A seemingly ordinary silver pinky ring for the left hand.

The first little secret is inside the ring.

He planned to borrow two tools from the shoemaker and then carve the words himself.
The second little secret is the small mechanism in the inner ring: there is a bulge that is difficult to see with the naked eye.

You won't notice it when you wear it normally, but once you twist it with other fingers, you can feel the bulge on the tip of your little finger.

The third is…

This ring is not made of silver at all.

It is a finger ring made of wood with holes drilled in it and covered with a layer of silver.

Therefore, the weight is quite different from the same silver ring, and once struck, the sound is also very different.

that's enough.

"Oh, I also want to order a pair of shoes from you."

"On my shelf—"

"No, no, I mean, custom made."

Roland searched his memory and tried his best to recreate the styles of the leather shoes that Nina had described.

She just said it casually at the time, but Roland now has to spend a lot of effort to recall it.

"picture"

Roland: ...
-
I admit you are somewhat useful now.

He picked up his cane and prepared to leave. "I'll find someone with good eyes to draw the picture, sir."

Hope this helps you, Alice.

he thinks.

perhaps…

Can I try it on in front of those ladies first?
He knew nothing about this and only heard strange stories from Miss Nina.

(End of this chapter)