They walked quickly down the street. Ted's mother was a little absent-minded for the moment—she was thinking of what she had ordered, and hoping she had forgotten nothing. And holding her little boy by the one hand she did not notice the queer thing he was holding in the other. Suddenly she stopped before a boot and shoe shop.
"I must get baby a pair of shoes," she said. "She is such a little kicker, she has the toes of her cloth ones out in no time. We must get her a pair of leather ones I think, Ted."
"Ses, I sink so," said Ted.
So his mother went into the shop and asked the man to show her some little leather shoes. Ted looked on with great interest, but when the shoes were spread out on the counter and he saw that they were all black, he seemed rather disappointed.
"Muzzer," he said in a low voice, tugging at his mother's skirts, "I saw such bootly boo boots in the man's winder."
His mother smiled.
"Yes, dear," she replied, "they're very pretty, but they wouldn't last so long, and I suspect they cost much more."
Ted looked puzzled.
"What does thoo mean?" he said, but before his mother had time to explain, the active shopman had reached down the "bootly" boots and held them forward temptingly.
"They're certainly very pretty," said baby's mother, who, to tell the truth, was nearly as much inclined for the blue boots as Ted himself. "What is the price of them?"