“Might you ’appen to have the feller one to this?” he asked.
“Surely,” answered the woman. “Once they was mine, an’ now I’m keeping ’em against my little gal’s old enough to wear ’em.”
She held out the other red boot.
“Is there—is there,” asked Andrew hesitating, “two big ‘M’s’ wrote just inside the linin’?”
“Right you are,” answered the woman; “an’ it stands fur—”
“It stands fur ‘Molly Martin,’” said Andrew, sitting suddenly down on the edge of the bed with Dickie in his arms. “Oh, be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands! I set every stitch in them little boots myself’, an’ you’re the little gal I lost twenty years ago!”
It really did turn out to be Andrew’s little girl, grown into a young woman and married to Mr Murphy the clown. The whole village was stirred and excited by the story, and Andrew himself, roused for the moment from his usual surly silence, told it over and over again to eager audiences as he had to Dickie, only now it had a better ending.
The children at the vicarage found it wonderfully interesting—more so than one of Pennie’s very best, and the nice part about it was that it had been Dickie who discovered Andrew’s little girl. Indeed, instead of being scolded for disobedience as she deserved, Dickie was made into a sort of heroine; when she was brought home sound asleep in Andrew’s arms, everyone was only anxious to hug and kiss her, because they were so glad to get her back again, and the next day it was much the same thing. The children were breathless with admiration when the history of the red boot was told, and Dickie’s daring adventure, and Mrs Hawthorn was scarcely able to get in a word of reproof.
“But you know,” she said, “that though we’re all glad Andrew’s daughter is found, still it was naughty and wilful of Dickie to go out by herself. She knew she was doing wrong, and disobeying mother.”
“But if she hadn’t,” remarked David, “most likely Andrew never would have found his little girl.”