bit of
shoemaker's thread. He had had quite a struggle with himself, before
starting, regarding these forlorn old shoes and another pair, spick
and span and black, and heavily clamping with thick new soles, which
Uncle Ozias Lamb had sent over for him to wear to the funeral.

"He sent 'em over, an' says you may wear 'em to the funeral, if
you're real careful," his aunt Belinda had said, and then added, with
her gentle sniff of deprecation and apology: "He says you'll have to
give 'em back again--they ain't to keep. He says he's got so
behindhand lately he 'ain't got any tithes to give to the Lord. He
says he 'ain't got nothing that will divide up into ten parts, 'cause
he 'ain't got more'n half one whole part himself." Belinda Lamb
repeated her husband's bitter saying out of his heart of poverty with
a scared look, and yet with a certain relish and soft aping of his
defiant manner.

"I don't want anybody to give when I can't give back again," Ann had
returned. "Ozias has always done full as much for us as we've done
for him." Then she had charged Jerome to be careful of the shoes,
and not stub the toes, so his uncle would have difficulty in selling
them.

"I'll wear my old shoes," Jerome had replied, sullenly, but then had
been borne down by the chorus of feminine rebuke and misunderstanding
of his position. They thought, one and all, that he was wroth because
the shoes were not given to him, and the very pride which forbade him
to wear them constrained him to do so.

However, this morning he had looked at them long, lifted them and
weighed them, turning them this way and that, put them on his feet
and stood contemplating them. He was ashamed to wear his old broken
shoes to call on grand folks, but he was too proud and too honest,
after all, to wear these borrowed ones.

So he stepped along now with an occasional uneasy glance at his feet,
but with independence in his heart. Jerome walked straight down the
road to Squire Eben Merritt's. The cut across the fields would have
been much shorter, for the road made a great curve for nearly half a
mile, but the boy felt that the dignified highway was the only route
for him, bent on such errands, in his best clothes.

Chapter VI

Squire Eben Merritt's house stood behind a file of dark pointed
evergreen trees, which had grown and thickened until the sunlight
never reached the house-front, which showed, in consequence, green
patches of moss and mildew. One en