"Kid, or silk?"
"Whichever is the more suitable."
"It's getting late for silk. Maybe you'd better take kid."
Mr. Duval did take kid ones. The sales-woman, with many a curious glance at her unusual customers, fitted a pair of tan gloves to Jeanne's unaccustomed fingers. Her fingers wouldn't stay stiff. They doubled and curled; but at last the gloves were on—and off again. Jeanne gave a sigh of relief.
Then there were shoes. Jeanne was glad that the holes in her stockings were quite small ones. Supposing it had been her other pair! All holes! As it was, the man to whom the clerk had transferred her customer seemed rather shocked to see any holes. Was it possible that there were people—even entire families—with no holes in their stockings? The fat boy that had tumbled off the wharf that morning and hadn't known her afterwards in the new pink dress, probably that fortunate child had whole stockings, because everything else about him seemed most gloriously new and whole; but surely, the greater part of the population went about in holes. Mollie, Mrs. Shannon, her father—even Old Captain. She had seen him put great patches in his thick woolen socks.
But what was the clerk putting on her feet! She had had shoes before. Thick and heavy and always too large that they might last the longer. Mollie had bought them, usually after the first snow had driven barefooted Jeanne to cover. But never such shoes as these. Soft, smooth, and only a tiny scrap longer than her slender foot. And oh, so softly black! And then, a dreadful thought.
"Daddy," said Jeanne, "I just love these shoes for myself; but I'm afraid they won't do. You see, Sammy gets them next. They aren't boys' shoes."
"These are your shoes, not Sammy's," replied her father.
When Mr. Duval had paid for all the wonderful things, they were tied in three big parcels. Jeanne carried one, her father carried two. It was dark and quite late when they finally reached the wharf.
"We will say nothing about this at home," said Mr. Duval, when Jeanne proposed stopping to show the things to Old Captain. "For the present, we must hide them in the old trunk. I have no wish to talk about this matter with anybody. It concerns nobody but us two. Can you keep the secret—even from Old Captain?"