“I’ll lend you some,” said Lottie obligingly.  “I have a pair of fine white lamb’s wool that will fit you.  They are a little small for me, and ma put them away to keep because grandma knit them herself after she was eighty years old.  But I know she would not care if you wore them just once.”

“Then let’s get them to-night and not say anything about it until after to-morrow,” said Ann.  “She might say I ought not to wear the shoes, and I’m just bound to have my own way for once in my life.”

When Ann’s dark eyes flashed as wickedly as they did then, Lottie always submitted without a word.  Opening a big chest in one corner of the room, she began fumbling among the pile of neatly wrapped winter flannels it contained, while Ann held the candle.

“I saw ma put them in this corner,” said Lottie.  “I am sure.  Oh! here they are,” she exclaimed, and as she unfolded them she sneezed so suddenly that it nearly put out the candle.  “It’s the red pepper,” she explained.  “They’re full of it, to keep out the moths.  Hold them up and shake them hard.”

Several shrivelled red pods fell out as Ann obeyed, and so much loose pepper that they both began sneezing violently.  Lottie’s mother presently called up the stairs for them to hurry to bed, for they surely must be taking cold.

The next afternoon when Mrs. Grayson’s carryall drove down the lane Ann was waiting in front of the cottage, and climbed in before her Aunt Sally came out to the gate to see them off.

“Tuck the lap-robe around you well,” she called.  “If I had known it was so cold, I’d have gotten out your hoods instead of those sunbonnets.  It really begins to feel as if winter is on the way.”

It was a dull gray day with a hint of snow in the air.  Several flakes fell before they reached the Grayson farm, and Ann pulled aside the lap-robe more than once to peep at the light green shoes with secret misgivings as to their appropriateness.  The wool stockings made them such a tight fit that they pinched considerably, but the pinching was more than compensated for by the shapely appearance of her trim little feet.  Besides there was a vast amount of satisfaction to the wilful child in the mere knowledge that she was having her own way.

[Illustration:  “ANN FOLLOWED GINGERLY IN THEIR WAKE.”]

Under ordinary circumstances Ann would have looked back at that afternoon as one of the merriest of her life.  She loved the woods like an Indian, and usually was the leading spirit in such exploits as they ventured on that day.  They were off to the woods with baskets and pails as soon as they had all assembled.  But for once the late wild grapes hung their tempting bunches overhead in vain.  The persimmons, frost-sweetened and brown, lay under the trees unsought by Ann’s nimble fingers, and the nuts pattered down on the dead leaves unheeded.  While the other children raced down the hills and whooped through the frosty hollows, Ann followed gingerly in their wake, picking her way as best she could through the rustling leaves and across the slippery logs that bridged the little brooks.  It was too cold to sit down.  She was obliged to keep stirring; so all that miserable afternoon she tagged after the others, painfully conscious of her fine shoes, and a slave to the task of keeping them clean.