Part 21 (2/2)

Mrs. Procter's expression lightened.

”Well, perhaps she can,” she said.

”And if she can't, mother?” Suzanna breathlessly awaited the answer.

”Well, we'll manage some way.”

And Suzanna was satisfied.

A week later Mr. Procter returned home, carrying a mysterious looking parcel.

”For you, Suzanna,” he said, his eyes sparkling. ”But let's not open it until after supper.”

Suzanna reluctantly put the package to one side. That supper would never end that evening she had a firm conviction.

And yet the end was reached, and she was opening the package, attended by the entire family. At last her eager eyes swept the contents, and her little beating heart for the moment palpitated strangely in her throat, for there lay a pair of shoes.

”Shoes,” said Mr. Procter, ”for you to wear in the Indian Drill. I saw them thrown out in a little booth when I went into Lane's shoe shop for a piece of leather to be made into washers. They really were marked at so ridiculously low a figure that I thought at once we could surely afford them for Suzanna. They are, I should judge, the very thing for the Indian Drill.”

To all of which Suzanna listened gravely. Her heart had gone back to its normal rhythm, but her eyes could not leave the atrocities lying before her. Truly, they were of fine leather, but with their high French heels, and flat gilt b.u.t.tons, they might have been in style when Suzanna's mother was a very little girl, and, to be really candid, they would have lain under the anathema of being out of date even then. But over and beyond the painful vintage of the shoes was the fact that Miss Smithson had announced that all the girls taking part in the Indian Drill should wear the same kind of shoes. She had gone farther and told the children that the right kind of shoes could be obtained at Bryson's for a dollar and forty-eight cents a pair, a really reduced price because fourteen pairs were to be purchased. She had finished by giving the children the number to be called for, ”A-14116.” Suzanna knew the number well; she had repeated it mentally over and over again.

Finally Suzanna found her voice. ”They're very nice, daddy,” she said.

”Yes, they are very nice,” he said. ”See, you can turn them up. They're as soft as a kid glove.”

”Well, since you've bought the shoes,” said Mrs. Procter, ”and probably at a very reasonable figure--” she paused, and Mr. Procter finished:

”Yes, they were only forty-eight cents, a remarkable bargain, I think.”

”Remarkable,” said Mrs. Procter, picking them up. ”Why, I believe they're a handmade shoe! Well,” she went on, ”since the shoes are accounted for, I think if I have to I can quite easily manage the rest of the outfit.”

Suzanna's heart sank lower. She only wondered miserably if her mother, seeing a piece of inexpensive goods of almost any shade, and finding a pattern easy to manage, would make up what she thought would do quite well for the Indian Drill costume. Then her thoughts returned to the shoes. Perhaps after all they wouldn't fit! She was enabled by that emanc.i.p.ating thought to turn a happier face to her father and again to thank him.

But alas, the shoes fitted perfectly.

”I think,” said Suzanna desperately, ”that perhaps they're a little bit too small--narrow, I mean.”

”Do they hurt you?” asked her mother.

Suzanna had to confess that they didn't hurt.

”They certainly make your foot look very nice and slender,” said her father.

Well, Suzanna thought miserably, she should have to wear them, and in that belief all interest in the Indian Drill left her. She simply couldn't, she felt, take her lead on the eventful day wearing those shoes. Every eye in the audience, she knew, would be fixed upon them, so different from those of the other girls, so terribly old-fas.h.i.+oned, as instinctively she sensed them to be.

Mrs. Procter carefully wrapped the bargains in the original tissue paper. She was happy in the thought that her little daughter was provided with a pretty and appropriate pair of dancing shoes.

But it was very perfunctorily that Suzanna went through the ensuing rehearsals at school. Her spirits were not lifted even when Miss Smithson announced that the costumes were to be obtained through a masquerader at the small cost of twenty-five cents for each pupil. But at length, the child's natural persevering force had its way, and she set her mind to studying the question of how to avoid wearing the unsuitable shoes and still preserve her father's confidence in his own good judgment. Usually she asked no help, working alone on the problems which a.s.sailed her, but suddenly the thought of her friend Drusilla came to her. She would ask Drusilla what she thought about the matter.

<script>