“If you please,” said Polly, with quite a matronly air, “it’s for Phronsie.”
“Is it, though?” said the old man, “then we must get her a nice pair, don’t you think?” And he beamed at her so kindly over his old spectacles that he quite won her heart over again, for the Pepper children were always delighted when an errand took them to his little shop; he was such a kindly, fresh, little old man.
“Now if you’ll sit right down here, my little girl, we’ll see what we can do for you.” And he brought a little wooden chair and placed it in the middle of the room.
Obediently, Phronsie sat down and confidently put her rusty little patched shoe upon Mr. Beebe’s knee.
“So, so!” he said, “and you thought you’d have a new pair of shoes this morning, and you thought you’d see what I’d got for you, didn’t you?” he added to make conversation, the others meanwhile encircling Phronsie and watching her with the most intense interest.
“Oh, I’ve never had a pair for my very own,” said the little girl, simply.
“Haven’t you, now?” said the old man, kindly. “Well, then, I don’t see but we must make this the best pair you’ve ever bought,” and he laughed and shook his sides till his spectacles nearly tumbled off; and all the children laughed with him, he was so jolly.
Then he got up and rummaged among some boxes over in the corner, until he emerged from them with two or three pairs of little shoes hanging over his arm.
“There, now, here’s a pair,” he said, and he proceeded to try on a beautiful shiny shoe over Phronsie’s little red stocking. It just fitted; but Polly saw to her dismay that it was “rights and lefts.”
“Oh, Ben,” she whispered to him aside, “they won’t do, and they’re lovely; for Mamsie said, you know, we must be sure to get ‘evens.’”