PAGE 7
The Lonesome Little Shoe
by
“Pooh, I don’t believe it,” sneered the vase.
“Presently our master toddled back from out the brook,” continued the little shoe, heedless of the vase’s interruption, “and sat among the cowslips and buttercups on the bank. The brook sang on as merrily as before. ‘Would you like to go sailing?’ asked our master of my mate. ‘Indeed I would,’ replied my mate, and so our master pulled my mate from his little foot and set it afloat upon the dancing waves of the brook. My mate was not the least alarmed. It spun around gayly several times at first and then glided rapidly away. The butterfly hastened and alighted upon the merry little craft. ‘Where are you going?’ I cried. ‘I am going down to the sea,’ replied my little mate, with laughter. ‘And I am going to marry the rose in the far-away south,’ cried the butterfly. ‘But will you not come back?’ I cried. They answered me, but they were so far away I could not hear them. It was very distressing, and I grieved exceedingly. Then, all at once, I discovered my little master was asleep, fast asleep among the cowslips and buttercups. I did not try to wake him–only I felt very miserable, for I was so cold and wet. Presently the lady thrush came, as she had said she would. The child is asleep–he will be ill–I must hasten to tell his mother,’ she cried, and away she flew.”
“And was he sick?” asked the vase.
“I do not know,” said the little shoe. “I can remember it was late that evening when the sweet lady and others came and took us up and carried us back home, to this very room. Then I was pulled off very unceremoniously and thrown under my little master’s bed, and I never saw my little master after that.
“How very strange!” exclaimed the match-safe.
“Very, very strange,” repeated the shoe. “For many days and nights I lay under the crib all alone. I could hear my little master sighing and talking as if in a dream. Sometimes he spoke of me, and of the brook, and of my little mate dancing to the sea, and one night he breathed very loud and quick and he cried out and seemed to struggle, and then, all at once, he stopped, and I could hear the sweet lady weeping. But I remember all this very faintly. I was hoping the fairies would come back, but they never came.
“I remember,” resumed the little shoe, after a solemn pause, “I remember how, after a long, long time, the sweet lady came and drew me from under the crib and held me in her lap and kissed me and wept over me. Then she put me in a dark, lonesome drawer, where there were dresses and stockings and the little hat my master used to wear. There I lived, oh! such a weary time, and we talked–the dresses, the stockings, the hat, and I did–about our little master, and we wondered that he never came. And every little while the sweet lady would take us from the drawer and caress us, and we saw that she was pale and that her eyes were red with weeping.”
“But has your little master never come back!” asked the old clock.
“Not yet,” said the little shoe, “and that is why I am so very lonesome. Sometimes I think he has gone down to the sea in search of my little mate and that the two will come back together. But I do not understand it. The sweet lady took me from the drawer to-day and kissed me and set me here on the mantelpiece.”
“You don’t mean to say she kissed you?” cried the haughty vase, “you horrid little stumped-out shoe!”
“Indeed she did,” insisted the lonesome little shoe, “and I know she loves me. But why she loves me and kisses me and weeps over me I do not know. It is all very strange. I do not understand it at all.”