"Why did you?" Tim looked up. The voice did not sound quite so terrible as he had expected. The truth was his father had been touched at sight of the forlorn figure, so very small and so sorrowful, which had bent over the broken jug.
"Why," he said, "I was looking for a pair of new shoes. I want a pair of shoes awful bad to wear at the picnic. All the other chaps wear shoes."
"How came you to think you'd find shoes in a jug?"
"Why Mama said so. I asked her for some new shoes and she said they had gone into the black jug, and that lots of other things had gone into it, too—coats and hats, and bread and meat and things—and I thought if I broke it I'd find them all, and there ain't a thing in it—and Mama never said what wasn't so before—and I thought 'twould be so—sure."
And Tim, hardly able to sob out the words, feeling how keenly his trust in mother's word had added to his great disappointment, sat down again, and cried harder than ever.
His father seated himself on a box in the disorderly yard and remained quiet for so long a time that Tim at last looked timidly up.
"I am real sorry I broke your jug, Father. I'll never do it again."
"No, I guess you won't," he said, laying a hand on the rough little head as he went away leaving Tim overcome with astonishment that his father had not been angry with him.
Two days after, on the very evening before the picnic, he handed Tim a parcel, telling him to open it.
"New shoes! new shoes!" he shouted. "Oh, Father, did you get a new jug and were they in it?"