x for a full minute before the fat,
complacent animals would start again. But Suzanna liked his play. It was
in keeping with this wondrous event. She even forgave the driver his
wrinkled red neck, from which as she sat behind him, she had earlier
deliberately turned away her eyes.

The children sprang to the ground and stood looking up at the big pile
of stone, this great show house of the town. Miss Massey swung back an
iron gate and led the way first through an arbor, sun-shaded and
fragrant; then out again into a garden glowing with crimson flowers.
"The garden I love best," she said. This from simple, dear Miss Massey
into whose whole life no great color had fallen, or if there was once a
promise that life should blossom for her into a full, joyous thing, the
promise had fallen very short of fulfillment.

And just then the disaster befell Suzanna. There in the wonderful red
garden, a dire sound fell upon her ears and her eyes following the
direction of the sound were just in time to see one white toe burst
through the confines of the black ribbon lengthening her slipper.

She stood a moment, gazing down. Then in an agony lest the others should
discover her plight, she tried to draw the toe back within the slipper,
but with no success. As Miss Massey and the little girls walked on,
Suzanna stopped and pulled the ribbon over the protruding toe, tucking
in the ravelled edges. Mercifully, the ribbon stayed in place since
Suzanna cramped her toe back that it might not force its way through
again. Hastily hopping along, she entered the massive front doors held
wide by a solemn man with brass buttons. He pointed down the wide hall.
"To the right," he said.

Would the ribbon hold! was Suzanna's only thought as she later found
herself in a room called the library, with books and soft-toned
pictures; with a great fireplace banked now with greens, from above
which looked down the lovely face of a lady, Miss Massey's mother whom
the daughter scarce remembered.

If only she had worn black stockings instead of her one beloved pair of
white, went on in thought, unhappy, humiliated Suzanna. If only--but in
conjecture Suzanna was lost. The cramped toe exerting its right, thrust
itself through again. One fleeting, horrified glance told the child that
two toes now peeped out on a world that would be scandalized should it
peep back.

No time now for any furtive maneuver an active little mind might suggest
to remedy the situation