“No; ordinary shoes, exactly alike!”
By this time Gabrielle had been arrayed in some clothes. She noticed that her mother’s hands trembled, but that her eyes were glad. The child looked up at the tall young doctor, who was watching her with his keen green eyes, and said: “My Daddy will be so glad. He will look at me, and not look so sorry, and there will be no hard things to stick into him when he cuddles me! He will be so glad!”
The doctor made a queer little sound in his throat; then he lifted Gabrielle in his arms and carried her to the window.
“Do you see the end of this street,” he asked, “where the roar and the rumbling sound comes from? That’s Oxford Street. Well, in that street is a beautiful shop full of shoes—shoes for little girls—and you are going there directly, to get the prettiest pair that mother can find for you!”
“May they have silver buckles?” Gabrielle asked eagerly.
“I think it extremely advisable they should have big silver buckles. You will walk both fast and far in buckles shoes, and you must learn to dance the tarantella, and all the dolls will sit in a row to watch you!”
Gabrielle gave a delighted laugh. “Will the leg that wore the irons get fat again, like the other?”
“Oh, dear, yes! You mustn’t think about that leg any more, but you must do all the exercises mother is going to show you, and when you can hang on a trapeze for twenty minutes, without falling off, you must write and tell me.”
Then Gabrielle’s mother finished dressing her, all but her boots. The boot with the “compensatum” sole lay near the instrument. Gabrielle looked at it with great aversion. “It’s a very dry day,” said she. “May I go to the cab in my stockings, and not put on no shoes till I have my new ones?”
The doctor pushed the little boot out of sight, under the chair, with his foot, and said: “I’ll carry you to the cab, and mother or the cabman will carry you to the shop across the pavement, and you shall never see that iron horror or that boot again!”