ut 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