is feet and
pulling and twitching at his ankles until he will be glad to go on
again. They will remind him to go straight to school and to come
straight home again as you have bidden him. Indeed, wherever he is
sent he will be quite sure to go, and he will come back again at just
the right moment and, by the time his feet have grown too large to wear
the little shoes, he will no longer need their help."

Days passed by, months passed by. The boy was no longer a baby, but
had grown large enough to wear the fairy's shoes and, just as she had
said, they always helped him to go the right way.

Months sped and years sped and another baby boy came to stay in the
little brown house, and then another and another and another, until the
mother had nine boys. Each one in turn wore the little shoes and, just
as the fairy had said, they never wore out. At last they descended to
the ninth and youngest boy and became Timothy's shoes.

Now the eighth little boy had rather small feet and had worn the shoes
longer than the others, besides Timothy was the baby and, for one
reason and another like these, his mother hated to put the rough little
shoes upon him. For a long time Timothy had gone his own way, which
was rarely the right way. At last he played truant from school so
often and was late to dinner so many times, that his mother said she
could bear it no longer, he must wear the fairy shoes. So she had them
freshly blackened and the copper tips newly polished and, one morning,
she brought them out and told Timothy to put them on.

"Now, Tim dear," she said, "go straight to school this morning. If you
don't these little shoes will pinch your feet terribly."

But Timothy did not mind. It was a bright, sunny morning in May and,
if he had loitered on the way when the cold March winds blew up his
jacket sleeves and made him shiver, and when the snow lay in great
drifts by the roadside, how could he help wishing to linger now when
every bush held a bird and every bank a flower?

Once or twice Timothy stopped to pick spring flowers, but the shoes
pinched his feet and he ran on again. At last he reached the bank
overlooking the swamp and, gazing down, he saw great clumps of
cowslips, with their dark green leaves and crowns of beautiful yellow
flowers.

Then Timothy forgot all about school, forgot what his mother had said,
forgot the shoes and their pinches and thought only of the cowslips.
Oh, he must have some!

In a mo