There was but one shoemaker in the town, and he was kept so busy that he took a generous measure of children’s feet and then allowed a size or more, to guard against the shoes being too small by the time he should get them finished.

When my little stogies began to leak, he shook his head thoughtfully, and declared that he had so many orders for men’s boots that he could not possibly work for women or children until those orders were filled.  Consequently, grandma kept her eye on my shoes, and as they got worse and worse, she became sorely perplexed.  She would not let me go barefooted, because she was afraid of “snags” and ensuing lockjaw; she could not loan me her own, because she was saving them for special occasions, and wearing instead the heavy sabots she had brought from her native land.  She tried the effect of continually reminding me to pick my way and save my shoes, which made life miserable for us both.  Finally she upbraided me harshly for a playful run across the yard with Courage, and I lost my temper, and grumbled.

“I would rather go barefooted and get snags in my feet than have so much bother about old shoes that are worn out and no good anyway!”

I was still crying when Hendrik, a roly-poly Hollander, came along and asked the cause of my distress.  Grandma told him that I was out of humor, because she was trying to keep shoes on my feet, while I was determined to run them off.  He laughed, bade me cheer up, sang the rollicking sailor song with which he used to drive away storms at sea, then showed me a hole in the heel of the dogskin boots he wore, and told me that, out of their tops, he would make me a beautiful pair of shoes.

No clouds darkened my sky the morning that Hendrik came, wearing a pair of new cowhide boots then squeaked as though singing crickets were between the heavy soles; for he had his workbox and the dogskins under his arm, and we took seats under the oak tree, where he laid out his tools and went to work without more ado.

He had brought a piece of tanned cowhide for the soles of my shoes, an awl, a sailor’s thimble, needles, coarse thread, a ball of wax, and a sharp knife.  The hair on the inside of the boot legs was thick and smooth, and the colors showed that one of the skins had been taken from the body of a black and white dog, and the other from that of a tawny brindle.  As Hendrik modelled and sewed, he told me a wondrous tale of the great North Polar Sea, where he had gone in a whaling vessel, and had stayed all winter among mountains of ice and snow.  There his boots had worn out.  So he had bought these skins from queer little people there, who live in snow huts, and instead of horses or oxen, use dogs to draw their sleds.

I liked the black and white skin better than the brindle, so he cut that for the right foot, and told me always to make it start first.  And when I put the shoes on they felt so soft and warm that I knew I could never forget Hendrik’s generosity and kindness.