“You may skip about that,” said Carl. “I don’t care about it.”
“I am afraid,” said the right shoe, “I am uninteresting. My excuse is, that I never was fitted to be anything else. Not to press upon people’s notice is the very lesson we are especially learned; we were never intended to occupy a high position in society, and it is reckoned an unbearable fault in us to make much noise in the world.”
“I say,” said Carl, “you may skip that.”
“I beg pardon,” said the shoe, “I was coming to the point. ‘Step by step’ is our family motto. However, I know young people like to get over the ground at a leap. I will do it at once.
“My brother and I are twins, and as much alike as it is possible perhaps for twins to be Mr. Peg, the cobbler, thought we were exactly alike; and our upper leathers did indeed run about on the same calf (as perchance they may another time), but our soles were once further apart than they are ever like to be for the future; one having roamed the green fields of Ohio on the back of a sturdy ox, while the other was raised in Vermont. However, we are mates now; and having been, as they say, ‘cut out for each other,’ I have no doubt we shall jog on together perfectly well.
“We are rather an old pair of shoes. In fact we have been on hand almost a year. I should judge from the remarks of our friend Mr. Peg when he was beginning upon us, that he was very unaccustomed to the trade of shoe-making—shoe-mending was what he had before lived by; or, perhaps, I should rather say, tried to live by; I am afraid it was hard work; and I suppose Mr. Peg acted upon the excellent saying, which is also a motto in our family, that ‘It is good to have two strings to one’s bow.’ It was in a little light front room, looking upon the street, which was Mr. Peg’s parlour, and shop, and workroom, that he cut out the leather and prepared the soles for this his first manufacture. I think he hadn’t stuff enough but for one pair, for I heard him sigh once or twice as he was fidgeting with his pattern over my brother’s upper leather, till it was made out. Mr. Peg was a little oldish man, with a crown of grey hairs all round the back part of his head; and he sat to work in his shirt sleeves, and with a thick, short leather apron before him. There was a little fire-place in the room, with sometimes fire in it, and sometimes not; and the only furniture was Mr. Peg’s little bit of a counter, the low rush-bottomed chair in which he sat to work, and a better one for a customer; his tools, and his chips—by which I mean the scraps of leather which he scattered about.
“Hardly had Mr. Peg got the soles and the upper leathers and the vamps to his mind, and sat down on his chair to begin work, when a little girl came in. She came from a door that opened upon a staircase leading to the upper room, and walked up to the cobbler. It was a little brown-haired girl, about nine or ten years old, in an old calico frock and pantalettes; she was not becomingly dressed, and she did not look very well.
“Hardly had Mr. Peg got the soles and the upper leathers and the vamps to his mind, and sat down on his chair to begin work, when a little girl came in.”—P. 115.