"No, I must never play with boys with dusty feet," she said, and lifting the gold star on her forehead very high, she passed down another flowery path and disappeared.
The fairy smiled (he looked mischievous) and waved his wand. In a second, Joe was standing in the middle of a big puddle of sticky mud. His face grew red with shame and disappointment and he felt tears pressing hard at the back of his eyes, but of course he could not be a cry baby.
The mud seemed to get tangled with strings and they got in between his toes when he tried to pull his feet out, and then he saw that it was his mother's apron that was all smeared with mud, and turning around in distress he saw her shawl; the very one she had thrown over him on the sofa. He tried to get free of the black stickiness and step over on to the shawl when his toes trod on something that felt like an old shoe, and how he did wish for his shoes and stockings!
Suddenly he felt cold and shivered. The mud turned into snow, and his feet were so cold that he tried to wriggle his toes and found he couldn't. They were numb. He couldn't feel that he had any toes; and just then the beautiful little girl came walking slowly back, and O, how he felt, standing there, splashed with the mud he had spattered all over himself trying to get out of the puddle.
He must not cry, for that would be worse than being dirty. She might think he was in the dirt by accident, but no accident would excuse a boy for crying.
She stood there, looking at him, not scornfully as before, but with a pitying, kindly look, and all at once she began to float up from the ground.
She poised, suspended in the air, leaning over him with such sweet sadness in her gentle eyes that he became frightened and awoke with a start.
It was morning and his mother was gazing down on him with her kind smile.
He looked up sheepishly and blinked his eyes. "Mother dear," he said, and he reached up for her hand, "I guess I forgot to wash my feet."