fore not without a few shillings in his pocket, was anxious to commemorate this first visit to his daughter by buying her a present, for which he fancied that nothing could be so appropriate as a pair of shoes. His ideas of fitness, however, did not jump with mine. I had wished, if possible, to keep out of Binnahan's head for a year, at least, all thoughts of either shoes or boots, as they were expensive and unnecessary articles of dress. Even on Sundays many well-dressed children came to school barefoot, the smartness of whose appearance was in no way diminished by their shapely bare legs and feet, whilst those who wore boots, on that day and no other, limped like young colts that have been shod by a clumsy blacksmith.
However, the father was not to be gainsaid, and brought from a store not only a pair of shoes but also of stockings. About an hour afterwards I went into the kitchen and found both him and Binnahan silent and melancholy, as if a life's hopes had been frustrated; the shoes were a misfit, and the store contained none of a proper size; the stockings also were big enough for a woman. I cheered up the desponding pair by representing that the shoes could be exchanged for a frock, and that the stockings might be saved until their owner should grow big enough to fill them, and thus we managed to stave off an artificial want for a while longer, but luxurious habits increasing in Barladong, and Sunday boots becoming general amongst Binnahan's schoolfellows, we would not permit her to be mortified by going to church barefoot, and so sent for the shoemaker. "And please, missis," she said in an eager whisper as I was directing how the boots should be made, "be sure to tell him to put squeak into
