He went to the door slowly, looked back, and then retreated into the sunshine.
“It would be mean to put them in mind of me,” he thought, as he withdrew.
Suddenly a sharp pain shot through him: a stone had cut his unshod foot.
“Oh, dear me! how ever shall I walk without any shoes or boots!” he thought, miserably; and he was very nearly bursting out crying.
On the edge of these fields was a wood,—a low, dark, rolling wood,—which looked to the little Earl, who missed his own forests, inviting and cool and sweet. By this time it was getting towards noon, and the sun was hot, and he felt thirsty and very tired. He was sad, too: he was glad to have satisfied those poor hungry children, but their indifference to him when they were satisfied was chilling and melancholy.
“But then we ought not to do a kindness that we may be thanked,” he said to himself. “It is a proper punishment to me, because I wished to be thanked, which was mean.”
So he settled, as he usually did, that it was all his own fault.
Happily for him, the ground was soft with summer dust, and so he managed to get along the little path that ran from the cottage through the lucern-fields, and from there the path became grass, which was still less trying to his little red stockings.
Yet he was anxious and troubled; he felt heavily weighted for his battle with the world without any shoes on, and he felt he must look ridiculous. For the first time, St. Martin did not seem to him so very much of a hero, because St. Martin’s gift was only a cloak. Besides, without his sash, the band of his knickerbockers could be seen; and he was afraid this was indecent.
Nevertheless, he went on bravely, if lamely. Believe me, nothing sets the world more straight than thinking that what is awry in it is one’s self.