“What is the matter with my nose?” asked Jacob, “why should I require a covering for it?” “Well,” replied the cobbler, “everyone to his taste. But I must say if I had a nose like yours I would make a case for it of bright red leather. See, I have just such a piece by me. A good stout cover for your nose would be most useful, for I am quite sure you must be constantly knocking it against everything that comes in your way.” The little fellow’s heart sank with fear. He felt his nose and found it was very thick and quite two spans in length. And so the old woman had altered his appearance too! That was why his mother had not known him and why everyone called him “an ugly dwarf.” “Master,” he said to his father, “have you a mirror you could lend me?” “Young sir,” said the father earnestly, “your figure is hardly such as to give you cause for conceit, and you have no reason to look into a glass constantly. Break yourself of the habit, in your case it is a foolish one.” “Believe me it is not out of conceit that I wish to see myself,” said Jacob, “and I do beseech you to lend me a glass for a moment.” “I do not possess such a thing,” said the cobbler. “My wife had one somewhere, but I do not know where she has hidden it. If you really do wish to see yourself, you had best go across the road and ask Urban, the barber, to let you take a look in his. He has one about twice the size of your head, so go and admire yourself by all means.” With these words his father took him by the shoulders and pushed him gently from the shop, locked the door upon him and went on with his work. Jacob, who had known the barber well in days gone by, crossed the road and entered his shop. “Good-morning, Urban,” he said, “I have come to ask a favour of you. Will you be so good as to allow me a glance into your looking-glass?” “With pleasure, there it stands,” he said laughing heartily, and the customer who was being shaved laughed also. “You are a handsome little fellow,” the barber went on, “tall and slim, a neck like a swan, hands as dainty as a queen’s, and as pretty a little nose as one could see anywhere. It is no wonder that you are conceited, and wish to take a glance at yourself. Well, you are welcome to the use of my mirrors, for it shall never be said of me that I was so jealous of your good looks I would not lend you my mirror to admire them in.” Shrieks of laughter greeted the barber’s words, but poor little Jacob, who had seen himself reflected in the mirror, could not keep the tears from his eyes. “No wonder you did not recognise your son, Mother dear,” he said to himself, “in the happy days when you were wont to parade him proudly before the neighbours’ eyes, he bore little resemblance to the thing he has now become.”