‘Why, they are dolly’s shoes!’ she cried; ‘only big enough for the Small People’s feet. I am terribly disappointed.’
‘Are you? Well, never mind; just see if they will fit you.’
‘I will, just for fun,’ laughed Gerna; and, putting one of them to her bare foot, to her unspeakable amazement it began to stretch, and in a minute it was on!
‘Well, I never!’ cried Farmer Vivian, and his great voice was so full of delight that it roared out all over the bar, even louder than Giant Tregeagle, whose roar of rage is still sometimes heard on St. Minver sandhills. ‘The Shoe has stretching powers, it seems. Try to get on its fellow.’
Gerna quickly did so, and was as proud as a hen with a brood of chicks as she stared at her feet.
‘You will have to keep them now,’ said the farmer, lowering his big voice to such gentleness and sweetness that she would have thought it was her own little friend at home in the sea-chest if she had not known it wasn’t. ‘A dear little lady gave them to me to keep until I should find somebody they would fit, and I have waited a very long time for that somebody. With the Shoes she gave me a Lantern, which she said must be given with the Shoes;’ and once more diving into his pocket, he fished out the tiniest lantern Gerna had ever seen. ‘Just big enough,’ he said, ‘to light home a benighted dumbledory’ (bumblebee); and he went away laughing towards the cliffs.
Gerna kept on the Shoes till the tide was down to Piskey Goog, when she took them off and put them into her underskirt pocket with the dinky Lantern.
The sands were strewn with Piskey-purses to-day instead of shells, and as it gave her something to do, she picked up as many as she could see; and when the tide had gone down to Pentire Hawn, she went near there and sat on a rock.
‘“See if they will fit you.”’