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.

The longer I wore them the more I became attached to them, and the
better I understood the story he had told me; for in my musings they
were not shoes, but "Spot" and "Brindle," live Eskimo dogs, that had
drawn families of queer little people in sleds over the frozen sea, and
had always been hungry and ready to fight over their scanty meals. At
times I imagined that they wanted to race and scamper about as happy
dogs do, and I would run myself out of breath to keep them going, and
always stop with Spot in the lead.

When I needed shoestrings, I was sent to th