thy, dear, I know you will be a good boy," his mother said.
"And mind you don't loiter or play truant, for if you do, these shoes
will pinch you horribly, and you'll be sure to be found out."

Timothy looked as if he didn't believe it. He was off like an arrow
from a bow, and he gave not one more thought to what his mother had
said.

The winter had been very cold, the spring had been fitful and stormy,
but May had suddenly burst upon the country with one broad, bright
smile of sunshine and flowers. If Timothy had loitered on the way to
school when the frost nipped his nose, and the ground was muddy, and
the March winds crept up his jacket sleeves, it was hard to hurry now
when every nook had a flower and every bush a bird.

It was wrong to play truant, but still it was very tempting.
_Twir-r-r-r_, up to the sky flew the larks. Down in the marsh below
the king-cups blossomed, as shining as gold.

Once or twice Timothy stopped, but his shoes pinched him and he ran on
all the more willingly because a bright butterfly went before him. But
where the path ran on above the marsh, and he looked down and saw the
king-cups, he dismissed all thoughts of school. The bank was long and
steep, but that did not matter to him. King-cups he must have; no
other flowers would do. He threw his school bag on the grass, and
began to scramble down the bank.

Timothy turned his feet toward the king-cups, but his shoes seemed
resolved to go to school. As he persisted in going toward the marsh,
he had such twitches and twinges as the fairy shoes pinched him that
it seemed as if his feet would be wrenched off. But Timothy was a
resolute little fellow, and he managed to drag himself, shoes and all,
down to the marsh.

Then he could not find a king-cup within reach. Not one grew on the
safe edge, but, like so many Will-o'-the-wisps, they shone out of the
depths of the treacherous bogs. Timothy wandered round the marsh;
_pinch, jerk_, every step hurt more than the one before. At last,
desperate with pain and disappointment, he fairly jumped into a patch
of the flowers that looked fairly near, and was at once ankle deep in
water. But, to Timothy's delight, the wet mud soaked the shoes off his
feet, and he was able to wade about among the rushes, reeds, and
king-cups, happy.

And he was none the worse, although he ought to have been. He moved
about very cautiously, feeling his way with a stick from tussock to
tussock of reedy grass, wondering