And thou, twin orbs of love and joy!
Unveil thy glories with the morn--
Dear eyes, another day is born--
Awake, O little sleeping boy!
Bright are the summer morning skies,
But in this quiet little room
There broods a chill, oppressive gloom--
All for the brightness of thine eyes.
Without those radiant orbs of thine
How dark this little world would be--
This sweet home-world that worships thee--
So let their wondrous glories shine
On those who love their warmth and joy--
Awake, O sleeping little boy.
"So that ended the fairy operetta, did it?" inquired the match-box.
"Yes," said the little shoe, with a sigh of regret. "The fairies were
such bewitching creatures, and they sang so sweetly, I could have
wished they would never stop their antics and singing. But, alas! I
fear I shall never see them again."
"What makes you think so?" asked the brass candlestick.
"I 'm sure I can't tell," replied the little shoe; "only everything is
so strange-like and so changed from what it used to be that I hardly
know whether indeed I am still the same little shoe I used to be."
"Why, what can you mean?" queried the old clock, with a puzzled look on
her face.
"I will try to tell you," said the little shoe. "You see, my mate and
our master and I were great friends; as I have said, we roamed and
frolicked around together all day, and at night my little mate and I
watched at master's bedside while he slept. One day we three took a
long ramble, away up the street and beyond where the houses were built,
until we came into a beautiful green field, where the grass was very
tall and green, and where there were pretty flowers of every kind. Our
little master talked to the flowers and they answered him, and we all
had a merry time in the meadow that afternoon, I can tell you. 'Don't
go away, little child,' cried the daisies, 'but stay and be our
playfellow always.' A butterfly came and perched on our master's hand,
and looked up and smiled, and said: 'I 'm not afraid of _you_; you
would n't hurt me, would you?' A little mouse told us there was a
thrush's nest in the bush yonder, and we hurried to see it. The lady
thrush was singing her four babies to sleep. They were strange-looking
babies, with their gaping mouths, bulbing eyes, and scant feathers!
'Do not wake them up,' protested the lady thrush. 'Go a little further
on and you will come to the brook. I will join you presently.' So we
went to the brook."
"Oh, but I would have been afraid," suggested the pen-wiper.
"Afraid of the brook!" cried the little shoe. "Oh, no; what could be
prettier than the brook! We heard it singing in the distance. We
called to it and it bade us welcome. How it smiled in the sunshine!
How restless and furtive and nimble it was, yet full of merry prattling
and noisy song. Our master was overjoyed. He had never seen the brook
before; nor had we, for that matter. 'Let me cool your little feet,'
said the brook, and, without replying, our master waded knee-deep into
the brook. In an instant we were wet through--my mate and I; but how
deliciously cool it was here in the brook, and how smooth and bright
the pebbles were! One of the pebbles told me it had come many, many
miles that day from its home in the hills where the brook was born."
"Pooh, I don't believe it," sneered the vase.
"Presently our master toddled back from out the brook," continued the
little shoe, heedless of the vase's interruption, "and sat among the
cowslips and buttercups on the bank. The brook sang on as merrily as
before. 'Would you like to go sailing?' asked our master of my mate.
'Indeed I would,' replied my mate, and so our master pulled my mate
from his little foot and set it afloat upon the dancing waves of the
brook. My mate was not the least alarmed. It spun around gayly
several times at first and then glided rapidly away. The butterfly
hastened and alighted upon the merry little craft. 'Where are you
going?' I cried. 'I am going down to the sea,' replied my little mate,
with laughter. 'And I am going to marry the rose in the far-away
south,' cried the butterfly. 'But will you not come back?' I cried.
They answered me, but they were so far away I could not hear them. It
was very distressing, and I grieved exceedingly. Then, all at once, I
discovered my little master was asleep, fast asleep among the cowslips
and buttercups. I did not try to wake him--only I felt very miserable,
for I was so cold and wet. Presently the lady thrush came, as she had
said she would. The child is asleep--he will be ill--I must hasten to
tell his mother,' she cried, and away she flew."
"And was he sick?" asked the vase.
"I do not know," said the little shoe. "I can remember it was late
that evening when the sweet lady and others came and took us up and
carried us back home, to this very room. Then I was pulled off very
unceremoniously and thrown under my little master's bed, and I never
saw my little master after that.
"How very strange!" exclaimed the match-safe.
"Very, very strange," repeated the shoe. "For many days and nights I
lay under the crib all alone. I could hear my little master sighing
and talking as if in a dream. Sometimes he spoke of me, and of the
brook, and of my little mate dancing to the sea, and one night he
breathed very loud and quick and he cried out and seemed to struggle,
and then, all at once, he stopped, and I could hear the sweet lady
weeping. But I remember all this very faintly. I was hoping the
fairies would come back, but they never came.
"I remember," resumed the little shoe, after a solemn pause, "I
remember how, after a long, long time, the sweet lady came and drew me
from under the crib and held me in her lap and kissed me and wept over
me. Then she put me in a dark, lonesome drawer, where there were
dresses and stockings and the little hat my master used to wear. There
I lived, oh! such a weary time, and we talked--the dresses, the
stockings, the hat, and I did--about our little master, and we wondered
that he never came. And every little while the sweet lady would take
us from the drawer and caress us, and we saw that she was pale and that
her eyes were red with weeping."
"But has your little master never come back!" asked the old clock.
"Not yet," said the little shoe, "and that is why I am so very
lonesome. Sometimes I think he has gone down to the sea in search of
my little mate and that the two will come back together. But I do not
understand it. The sweet lady took me from the drawer to-day and
kissed me and set me here on the mantelpiece."
"You don't mean to say she kissed you?" cried the haughty vase, "you
horrid little stumped-out shoe!"
"Indeed she did," insisted the lonesome little shoe, "and I know she
loves me. But why she loves me and kisses me and weeps over me I do
not know. It is all very strange. I do not understand it at all."