“Really, Miss Norah, you’ve got a man’s foot—you really have. Reminds me of a cousin of mine who always used to have his boots made specially for him, all on account of their saying that it took two pairs of anybody else’s boots to make him one. Used to work on a farm, he did, which, I have been told, causes the feet to spread.”
“I don’t believe, Jane, it is that which has extended mine!”
“It’s sure and certain something must have; because never before did I see so large a foot upon a lady’s leg, except my grandmother, what went off with dropsy, so that, when she died, her feet was like pumpkins. But these shoes have got to go on somehow, or else I’ll know the reason why.”
It was not necessary for her to institute any inquiry into recondite causes—the shoes went on. With difficulty, it is true, but still they went. And being on, they proved to be not so tight as they might have been—that is, considering. When I think of some of the shoes into which my feet have been compressed, Jane’s might have been regarded as almost loose. She regarded the fruits of her labours with an air of triumph.
“No mistake, you do fill them.”
“I do. It has been my unfortunate experience, on several occasions, to have filled my shoes a little too completely.”
“Can you walk in them?”
I stood up to try. I found that I could, at present. Whether, after having worn them for an hour or two, locomotion might not become more difficult, was another story altogether.
“I shouldn’t care to do a ten-mile tramp in them; but I think I can manage to do all the walking that’s likely to be required.”
If the principal pedestrian exercise which I was likely to have to undergo consisted in passing from seat to seat at the Gaiety Theatre, I ought to be equal to that. Having once succeeded in getting me into her shoes, Jane became positively laudatory.