So Lydia skipped up the road with her old shoes under her arm.
“Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe,
Have it done at half-past two,
Stitch it up and stitch it down,
And see if now my shoe is found,”
she sang over and over to herself as she went.
Up the side road the houses were few, and Lydia peered carefully at each for special flowers and the shoemaker’s trademark over the door. But only the usual garden flowers nodded in the breeze, so Lydia kept on until she saw a blaze of color down the road before her. She could see the scarlet and white of flowers and the bright green of leaves, but they seemed to be growing on top of the house instead of on the ground, and it was not until she drew very near that she saw it was not a house at all, but a carriage drawn up at the side of the road, an old-fashioned black coach that had certainly been turned into a shoemaker’s shop, for out of the open window floated Rap-i-tap-tap! Rap-i-tap-tap! Rap-i-tap-tap! that told of some one hard at work within. Over the door on a nail hung a pair of baby’s pale-blue kid shoes, the cobbler’s trademark, and as for the flowers—Lydia wished her own little garden-bed looked one quarter as well. For gorgeous masses of scarlet and white bloom covered the carriage roof, flowered in the coachman’s box, and grew in little window-boxes cunningly fastened on the doors.
SUCH A COBBLER’S SHOP HAD NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE
Such a cobbler’s shop had never been seen before, and Lydia was staring at it in amazement when a head popped out of the doorway, and a voice said:
“Flowers or shoes?”
“W-what?” stammered Lydia, taken by surprise.
“I said ‘flowers or shoes’?” repeated the voice, that belonged to Mr. Jolly, the cobbler, Lydia felt sure, for he wore a leather apron, and held a small hammer in one hand and a shoe in the other. “Some folks come to me for flowers, some folks come to me for shoes. Which are you?”